Clarissa Harlowe, or the History of a Young Lady - Volume 3 — Letter X

LETTER X

TO MISS ARABELLA HARLOWE [ENCLOSED TO MISS HOWE IN THE PRECEDING.

] ST.

ALBAN'S, APR.

11. MY DEAR SISTER,

I have, I confess, been guilty of an action which carries with it a rash and undutiful appearance.

And I should have thought it an inexcusable one, had I been used with less severity than I have been of late; and had I not had too great reason to apprehend, that I was to be made a sacrifice to a man I could not bear to think of.

But what is done, is done--perhaps I could wish it had not; and that I had trusted to the relenting of my dear and honourable parents.

--Yet this from no other motives but those of duty to them.

--To whom I am ready to return (if I may not be permitted to retire to The Grove) on conditions which I before offered to comply with.

Nor shall I be in any sort of dependence upon the person by whose means I have taken this truly-reluctant step, inconsistent with any reasonable engagement I shall enter into, if I am not further precipitated.

Let me not have it to say, now at this important crisis!

that I have a sister, but not a friend in that sister.

My reputation, dearer to me than life, (whatever you may imagine from the step I have taken,) is suffering.

A

little lenity will, even yet, in a great measure, restore it, and make that pass for a temporary misunderstanding only, which otherwise will be a stain as durable as life, upon a creature who has already been treated with great unkindness, to use no harsher a word.

For your own sake therefore, for my brother's sake, by whom (I must say) I have been thus precipitated, and for all the family's sake, aggravate not my fault, if, on recollecting every thing, you think it one; nor by widening the unhappy difference, expose a sister for ever--prays Your affectionate CL.

HARLOWE.

I shall take it for a very great favour to have my clothes directly sent me, together with fifty guineas, which you will find in my escritoire (of which I enclose the key); as also of the divinity and miscellany classes of my little library; and, if it be thought fit, my jewels--directed for me, to be left till called for, at Mr. Osgood's, near Soho-square.

LETTER XI

MR.

LOVELACE, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ.

Mr. Lovelace, in continuation of his last letter, (No. VII.

) gives an account to his friend (pretty much to the same effect with the lady's) of all that passed between them at the inns, in the journey, and till their fixing at Mrs. Sorling's; to avoid repetition, those passages in his narrative are extracted, which will serve to embellish her's; to open his views; or to display the humourous talent he was noted for.