Reconciliation with my friends I do not expect; nor pardon from them; at least, till in extremity, and as a viaticum.

O my beloved Mrs. Norton, you cannot imagine what I have suffered!—­But indeed my heart is broken!—­I am sure I shall not live to take possession of that independence, which you think would enable me to atone, in some measure, for my past conduct.

While this is my opinion, you may believe I shall not be easy till I can obtain a last forgiveness.

I wish to be left to take my own course in endeavouring to procure this grace.  Yet know I not, at present, what that course shall be.

I will write.  But to whom is my doubt.  Calamity has not yet given me the assurance to address myself to my father.  My uncles (well as they once loved me) are hard hearted.  They never had their masculine passions humanized by the tender name of father.  Of my brother I have no hope.  I have then but my mother, and my sister, to whom I can apply.—­’And may I not, my dearest Mamma, be permitted to lift up my trembling eye to your all-cheering, and your once more than indulgent, your fond eye, in hopes of seasonable mercy to the poor sick heart that yet beats with life drawn from your own dearer heart?—­Especially when pardon only, and not restoration, is implored?’

Yet were I able to engage my mother’s pity, would it not be a mean to make her still more unhappy than I have already made her, by the opposition she would meet with, were she to try to give force to that pity?

To my sister, then, I think, I will apply—­Yet how hard-hearted has my sister been!—­But I will not ask for protection; and yet I am in hourly dread that I shall want protection.—­All I will ask for at present (preparative to the last forgiveness I will implore) shall be only to be freed from the heavy curse that seems to have operated as far is it can operate as to this life—­and, surely, it was passion, and not intention, that carried it so far as to the other!

But why do I thus add to your distresses?—­It is not, my dear Mrs. Norton, that I have so much feeling for my own calamity that I have none for your’s:  since your’s is indeed an addition to my own.  But you have one consolation (a very great one) which I have not:—­That your afflictions, whether respecting your more or your less deserving child, rise not from any fault of your own.

But what can I do for you more than pray?—­Assure yourself, that in every supplication I put up for myself, I will with equal fervour remember both you and your son.  For I am and ever will be

Your truly sympathising and dutiful
Clarissa Harlowe.

LETTER LXV

Miss Howe, to miss Clarissa Harlowe [SUPERSCRIBED for Mrs. Rachel Clark, &c.] Wednesday, July 5.