Clarissa Harlowe by Samuel Richardson

Sat. Sunday, May 20, 21 Now, my dear, for the promised subject. You must not ask me how I came by the originals (such they really are) that I am going to present you with: for my mother would not read to me those parts of your uncle's letter which bore hard upon myself, and which leave him without any title to mercy from me: nor would she let me hear but what she pleased of hers in answer; for she has condescended to answer him -- with a denial, however; but such a denial as no one but an old bachelor would take from a widow.

Anybody, except myself, who could have been acquainted with such a fal-lal courtship as this must have been had it proceeded, would have been glad it had gone on: and I dare say, but for the saucy daughter, it had. My good mamma, in that case, would have been ten years the younger for it, perhaps: and, could I but have approved of it, I should have been considered by her as if ten years older than I am: since, very likely, it would have been: "We widows, my dear, know not how to keep men at a distance -- so as to give them pain, in order to try their love.