Chapter 60

MR. LOVELACE, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ.

Curse upon the Colonel, and curse upon the writer of the last letter I received, and upon all the world! Thou to pretend to be as much interested in my Clarissa's fate as myself!--'Tis well for one of us that this was not said to me, instead of written.--Living or dying, she is mine--and only mine. Have I not earned her dearly?--Is not d----n----n likely to be the purchase to me, though a happy eternity will be her's?

An eternal separation!--O God! O God!--How can I bear that thought!--But yet there is life!--Yet, therefore, hope--enlarge my hope, and thou shalt be my good genius, and I will forgive thee every thing.

For this last time--but it must not, shall not be the last--Let me hear, the moment thou receivest this--what I am to be--for, at present, I am

The most miserable of Men.

ROSE, AT KNIGHTSBRIDGE, FIVE O'CLOCK.

My fellow tells me that thou art sending Mowbray and Tourville to me:--I want them not--my soul's sick of them, and of all the world--but most of myself. Yet, as they send me word they will come to me immediately, I will wait for them, and for thy next. O Belford, let it not be--But hasten it, be what it may!