Yet I have so good an opinion of poor Brown, that I cannot but think there is something extraordinary in his silence.
'To return to Lucy Bertram.

No, my dearest Matilda, she can never, never rival you in my regard, so that all your affectionate jealousy on that account is without foundation.

She is, to be sure, a very pretty, a very sensible, a very affectionate girl, and I think there are few persons to whose consolatory friendship I could have recourse more freely in what are called the real evils of life.

But then these so seldom come in one's way, and one wants a friend who will sympathise with distresses of sentiment as well as with actual misfortune.

Heaven knows, and you know, my dearest Matilda, that these diseases of the heart require the balm of sympathy and affection as much as the evils of a more obvious and determinate character.