Chapter 84

MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE, TO MISS HOWE WEDN. MORNING, APRIL 19.

I am glad, my dear friend, that you approve of my removal to London.

The disagreement between your mother and you gives me inexpressible affliction. I hope I think you both more unhappy than you are. But I beseech you let me know the particulars of the debate you call a very pretty one. I am well acquainted with your dialect. When I am informed of the whole, let your mother have been ever so severe upon me, I shall be easier a great deal.--Faulty people should rather deplore the occasion they have given for anger than resent it.

If I am to be obliged to any body in England for money, it shall be to you. Your mother need not know of your kindness to me, you say--but she must know it, if it be done, and if she challenge my beloved friend upon it; for would you either falsify or prevaricate?--I wish your mother could be made easy on this head--forgive me, my dear,--but I know--Yet once she had a better opinion of me.--O my inconsiderate rashness!--Excuse me once more, I pray you.--Pride, when it is native, will shew itself sometimes in the midst of mortifications--but my stomach is down already.

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I am unhappy that I cannot have my worthy Hannah. I am sorry for the poor creature's illness as for my own disappointment by it. Come, my dear Miss Howe, since you press me to be beholden to you: and would think me proud if I absolutely refused your favour; pray be so good as to send her two guineas in my name.

If I have nothing for it, as you say, but matrimony, it yields little comfort, that his relations do not despise the fugitive, as persons of their rank and quality-pride might be supposed to do, for having been a fugitive.

But O my cruel, thrice cruel uncle! to suppose--but my heart checks my pen, and will not let it proceed, on an intimation so extremely shocking as that which he supposes!--Yet, if thus they have been persuaded, no wonder if they are irreconcilable.

This is all my hard-hearted brother's doings!--His surmisings:--God forgive him--prays his injured sister!