>>> Now, my dear, it is certain, without applying to that too-much-favoured housekeeper, that there is not such a man within ten miles of your uncle.-- Very true!--One Tomkins there is, about four miles off; but he is a day-labourer: and one Thompson, about five miles distant the other way; but he is a parish schoolmaster, poor, and about seventy.
>>> A man, thought but of £.800 a year, cannot come from one country to settle in another, but every body in both must know it, and talk of it.
>>> Mrs. Hodges may yet be sounded at a distance, if you will. Your uncle is an old man. Old men imagine themselves under obligation to their para- >>> mours, if younger than themselves, and seldom keep any thing from their knowledge. But if we suppose him to make secret of this designed treaty, it is impossible, before that treaty was thought of, but she must have seen him, at least have heard your uncle speak praisefully of a man he is said to be so intimate with, let him have been ever so little a while in those parts.
>>> Yet, methinks, the story is so plausible--Tom- linson, as you describe him, is so good a man, and so much of a gentleman; the end to be answered >>> by his being an impostor, so much more than neces- sary if Lovelace has villany in his head; and as >>> you are in such a house--your wretch's behaviour to him was so petulant and lordly; and Tomlin- son's answer so full of spirit and circumstance; >>> and then what he communicated to you of Mr. Hickman's application to your uncle, and of Mrs. Norton's to your mother, [some of which particu- >>> lars, I am satisfied, his vile agent, Joseph Leman, could not reveal to his vile employer;] his press- ing on the marriage-day, in the name of your uncle, which it could not answer any wicked pur- >>> pose for him to do; and what he writes of your uncle's proposal, to have it thought that you were married from the time that you have lived in one house together; and that to be made to agree with the time of Mr. Hickman's visit to your uncle. >>> The insisting on a trusty person's being present at the ceremony, at that uncle's nomination--These things make me willing to try for a tolerable construc- tion to be made of all. Though I am so much puzzled by what occurs on both sides of the ques- >>> tion, that I cannot but abhor the devilish wretch, whose inventions and contrivances are for ever em- ploying an inquisitive head, as mine is, without affording the means of absolute detection.