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importance, for your one false step, be pleased to consider, that this life is but a state of probation; and if you have your purification in it, you will be the more happy. Nor doubt I, that you will have the higher reward hereafter for submitting to the will of Providence here, with patience and resignation.

In

You see, my dearest Miss Clary, that I make no scruple to call the step you took a false one. you it was less excusable than it would have been in any other young lady; not only because of your superior talents, but because of the opposition between your character and his so that if you had been provoked to quit your father's house, it needed not to have been with him. Nor needed I, indeed, but as an instance of my impartial love, to have written this to you*.

After this, it will have an unkind, and perhaps at this time an unseasonable appearance, to express my concern, that you have not before favoured me with a line. Yet if you can account to yourself for your silence, I dare say, I ought to be satisfied; for I am sure you love me: as I both love and honour you, and ever will, and the more for your misfortunes.

One consolation, methinks, I have, even when I am sorrowing for your calamities; and that is, that I know not any young person so qualified to shine the brighter for the trials she may be exercised with: and yet it is a consolation that ends in adding to my regrets for your afflictions, because you

* Mrs. Norton having only the family representation and invectives to form her judgment upon, knew not that Clarissa had determined against going off with Mr. Lovelace ; nor how solicitous she had been to procure for herself any other protection than his, when she apprehended, that if she staid, she had no way to avoid being married to Mr. Solmes.

are blessed with a mind so well able to bear prosperity, and to make every body round you the better for it!-Woe unto him!-O this wretched, wretched man !-But I will forbear till I know

more,

Ruminating on every thing your melancholy letter suggests, and apprehending from the gentleness of your mind, the amiableness of your person, and your youth, the further misfortunes and inconveniences to which you may possibly be subjected; I cannot conclude without asking for your leave to attend you and that in a very earnest mannerand I beg of you not to deny me, on any consideration relating to myself, or even to the indisposition of my other beloved child; if I can be either of use or comfort to you. Were it, my dearest young lady, but for two or three days, permit me to attend you, although my son's illness should increase, and compel me to come down again at the end of those two or three days.-I repeat my request likewise, that you will command from me the little sum remaining in my hands of your bounty to your poor, as well as that dispensed to Your ever affectionate and faithful servant, JUDITH NORTON.

LETTER XXXIV.

MISS CL. HARLOWE TO LADY BETTY LAWRANCE.

MADAM,

Thursday, June 29.

I HOPE you will excuse the freedom of this address, from one who has not the honour to be personally known to you, although you must have heard much of Clarissa Harlowe. It is only to beg the favour of a line from your ladyship's hand (by the

next post, if convenient) in answer to the following questions:

1. Whether you wrote a letter, dated, as I have a memorandum, Wedn. June 7. congratulating your nephew Lovelace on his supposed nuptials, as reported to you by Mr. Spurrier, your ladyship's steward, as from one Captain Tomlinson:-and in it reproaching Mr. Lovelace, as guilty of slight, &c. in not having acquainted your ladyship and the family with his marriage?

2. Whether your ladyship wrote to Miss Montague to meet you at Reading, in order to attend you to your cousin Leeson's in Albemarle Street; on your being obliged to be in town on your old chancery-affair, I remember are the words? and whether you bespoke your nephew's attendance there on Sunday night the 11th? 3. Whether your ladyship and Miss Montague did come to town at that time; and whether you went to Hampstead on Monday, in a hired coach and four, your own being repairing, and took from thence to town the young creature whom you visited there?

Your ladyship will probably guess, that these questions are not asked for reasons favourable to your nephew Lovelace. But be the answer what it will, it can do him no hurt, nor me any good; only that I think I owe it to my former hopes (however deceived in them) and even to charity, that a person, of whom I was once willing to think better, should not prove so egregiously abandoned, as to be wanting, in every instance, to that veracity which is an indispensable in the character of a gentleman.

Be pleased, madam, to direct to me (keeping the

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direction secret for the present) to be left at the Belle Savage on Ludgate Hill, till called for. I am Your ladyship's most humble servant,

CLARISSA HARLOWE.

LETTER XXXV.

LADY BETTY LAWRANCE TO MISS CL. HARLOWE.

DEAR MADAM,

Saturday, July 1.

I FIND that all is not as it should be between you and my nephew Lovelace. It will very much afflict me, and all his friends, if he has been guilty of any designed baseness to a lady of your character and

merit.

We have been long in expectation of an opportunity to congratulate you and ourselves upon an event most earnestly wished for by us all; since all our hopes of him are built upon the power you have over him: for if ever man adored a woman, he is that man, and you, madam, are that woman.

Miss Montague, in her last letter to me, in answer to one of mine, inquiring if she knew from him whether he could call you his, or was likely soon to have that honour, has these words: 'I know not what to make of my cousin Lovelace, as to the point your ladyship is so earnest about. He sometimes says, he is actually married to Miss Cl. Harlowe at other times, that it is her own fault if he be not. He speaks of her, not only with love, but with reverence; yet owns, that there is a misunderstanding between them; but confesses that she is wholly faultless. An angel, and not a woman, he says she is: and that no man living can be worthy of her.'

:

This is what my niece Montague writes.

God grant, my dearest young lady, that he may not have so heinously offended you, that you cannot forgive him! If you are not already married, and refuse to be his, I shall lose all hopes that he ever will marry, or be the man I wish him to be. So will Lord M. So will Lady Sarah Sadleir.

I will now answer your questions: but indeed I hardly know what to write, for fear of widening still more the unhappy difference between you. But yet such a young lady must command every thing from me. This then is my answer.

I wrote not any letter to him on or about the 7th of June.

Neither I nor my steward know such a man as Capt. Tomlinson.

I wrote not to my niece to meet me at Reading, nor to accompany me to my cousin Leeson's in town.

My chancery-affair, though like most chanceryaffairs, it be of long standing, is nevertheless now in so good a way, that it cannot give me occasion to go to town.

Nor have I been in town these six months: nor at Hampstead for several years.

Neither shall I have any temptation to go to town, except to pay my congratulatory compliments to Mrs. Lovelace. On which occasion I should go with the greatest pleasure; and should hope for the favour of your accompanying me to Glenham Hall, for a month at least.

Be what will the reason of your inquiry, let me entreat you, my dear young lady, for Lord M.'s sake; for my sake; for this giddy man's sake, soul as well as body; and for all our family's sakes; not to suffer this answer to widen differences so far as to make you refuse him, if he already has not

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