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You think, that were it not for that unhappy notion of my moving talent, my mother would relent. What would I give to see her once more, and, although unknown to her, to kiss but the hem of her garment!

But I can write nothing but what must give you trouble. I will therefore, after repeating my desire that you will not intercede for me but with my previous consent, conclude with the assurance, that I am, and ever will be, Your most affectionate and dutiful,

CLARISSA HARLOWE.

MISS ARABELLA HARLOWE TO MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE. MY UNHAPPY LOST SISTER!-What a miserable hand have you made of your romantic and giddy expedition!-I pity you at my heart. You may well grieve and repent!-Lovelace has left you!-In what way or circumstances, you know best.

My poor mother!-Your rashness and folly have made her more miserable than you can be.-Yet she has besought my father to grant your request.

My uncles joined with her; for they thought there was a little more modesty in your letter, than in the letters of your pert advocate and my father is pleased to give me leave to write; but only these words for him, and no more: That he withdraws the curse he laid upon you, at the first hearing of your wicked flight, so far as it is in his power to do it; and hopes that your present punishment may be all that you will meet with. For the rest, he will never own you, nor forgive you; and grieves he has such a daughter in the world.

All this, and more, you have deserved from him, and from all of us: But what have you done to this abandoned libertine, to deserve what you have met with at his bands ?-I fear, I fear, sister!-But no more !-A blessed four months work have you made of it.

My brother is now at Edinburgh, sent thither by my father (though he knows not this to be the motive) that he may not meet your triumphant deluder.

We are told he would be glad to marry you: But why, then, did he abandon you? He had kept you till he was tired of you, no question; and it is not likely he would wish to have you but upon the terms you have already without all doubt been his.

You ought to advise your friend Miss Howe to concern herself less in your matters than she does, except she could do it with more decency. She has written three letters to me very insolent ones. Your favourer, poor Mrs. Norton, thinks you know nothing of the pert creature's writing. I hope you don't. But then the more impertinent the writer. But, believing the fond woman, I sat down the more readily to answer your letter; and I write with less severity I can tell you, than otherwise I should have done, if I had answered it at all.

Monday last was your birth-day. Think, poor ungrateful wretch, as you are! how we all used to keep it; and you will not wonder to be told, that we ran away from one another that day. But God give you true penitence, if you have it not already! And it will be true, if it be equal to the shame and the sorrow you have given us all.

Your afflicted Sister,

ARABELLA HARLOWE

Your cousin Morden is every day expected in England. He, as well as others of the family, when he comes to hear what a blessed piece of work you have made of it, will wish you never had had a being.

MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE TO MISS HOWE.

Tuesday, July 30. OU have given me great pleasure, my dearest friend, by your approbation of my reasonings,

and of my resolution founded upon them, never to have Mr. Lovelace. This approbation is so right a thing, give me leave to say, from the nature of the case, and from the strict honour and true dignity of mind, which I always admired in my Anna Howe, that I could. nardly tell to what, but to my evil destiny, which of late would not let me please anybody, to attribute the advice you gave me to the contrary.

You are very obliging to me, intentionally, I know, when you tell me, it is in my power to hasten the day of Mr. Hickman's happiness. But yet, give me leave to say, that I admire this kind assurance less than any other paragraph of your letter..

In the first place you know it is not in my power to say when I can dismiss my physician; and you should not put the celebration of a marriage intended by yourself,. and so desirable to your mother, upon so precarious an issue. Nor will I accept of a compliment, which must mean a slight to her.

If anything could give me a relish for life, after what I have suffered, it would be the hopes of the continuance of the more than sisterly love, which has, for years, unin-terruptedly bound us together as one mind. And why,. my dear, should you defer giving (by a tie still stronger) another friend to one, who has so few ?

I am glad you have sent my letter to Miss Montague.. I hope I shall hear no more of this unhappy man.

I had begun the particulars of my tragical story: but it is so painful a task, and I have so many more important things to do, and, as I apprehend, so little time to

do them in, that, could I avoid it, I would go no farther in it.

Then, to this hour, I know not by what means several of his machinations to ruin me were brought about; so that some material parts of my sad story must be defective, if I were to sit down to write it. But I have been thinking of a way that will answer the end wished for by your mother and you full as well; perhaps better.

Mr. Lovelace, it seems, has communicated to his friend Mr. Belford all that has passed between himself and me, as he went on. Mr. Belford has not been able to deny it. So that (as we may observe by the way) a poor young creature, whose indiscretion has given a libertine power over her, has a reason she little thinks of, to regret her folly; since these wretches, who have no more honour in one point than in another, scruple not to make her weakness a part of their triumph to their brother libertines.

I have nothing to apprehend of this sort, if I have the 'justice done me in his letters, which Mr. Belford assures me I have and therefore the particulars of my story, and the base arts of this vile man, will, I think, be best collected from those very letters of his (if Mr. Belford can be prevailed upon to communicate them); to which I dare appeal with the same truth and fervour as he did, who says, O that one would hear me and that mine. adversary had written a book -Surely, I would take it upon my shoulders, and bind it to me as a crown: For I covered not my transgressions as Adam, by hiding mine. iniquity in my bosom.

There is one way, which may be fallen upon to induce

Mr. Belford to communicate these letters; since he seems to have (and declares he always had) a sincere abhorrence of his friend's baseness to me but that, you'll say, when you hear it, is a strange one. earnest upon it at present.

Nevertheless, I am very

It is no other than this:

I think to make Mr. Belford the executor of my last will (don't be surprised): And with this view I permit his visits with the less scruple and every time I see him, from his concern for me, am more and more inclined to do so. If I hold in the same mind, and if he accept the trust, and will communicate the materials in his power, those, joined with what you can furnish, will answer the whole end.

I know you will start at my notion of such an executor: but pray, my dear, consider, in my present circumstances, what I can do better, as I am empowered to make a will, and have considerable matters in my own disposal.

Now Mr. Belford, as I have already mentioned, knows everything that has passed. He is a man of spirit, and, it seems, as fearless as the other, with more humane qualities. You don't know, my dear, what instances of sincere humanity this Mr. Belford has shown, not only on occasion of the cruel arrest, but on several occasions since. And Mrs. Lovick has taken pains to enquire after his general character; and hears a very good one of him, for justice and generosity in all his concerns of meum and tuum, as they are called he has a knowledge of law matters; and has two executorships upon him at this time, in the discharge of which his honour is unquestioned.

All these reasons have already in a manner determined me to ask this favour of him; although it will have an odd sound with it to make an intimate friend of Mr. Lovelace my executor.

This is certain my brother will be more acquiescent a great deal in such a case with the articles of my will, as he will see that it will be to no purpose to controvert some of them, which else, I dare say, he would controvert, or persuade my other friends to do so. And who would involve an executor in a law suit, if they could help it?

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