But can I blame her; when you have a father and mother living, who have so much to answer for?—­So much!—­as no father and mother, considering the child they have driven, persecuted, exposed, renounced, ever had to answer for!

But again I must execrate the abandoned villain—­yet, as I said before, all words are poor, and beneath the occasion.

But see we not, in the horrid perjuries and treachery of this man, what rakes and libertines will do, when they get a young creature into their power!  It is probable that he might have the intolerable presumption to hope an easier conquest:  but, when your unexampled vigilance and exalted virtue made potions, and rapes, and the utmost violences, necessary to the attainment of his detestable end, we see that he never boggled at them.  I have no doubt that the same or equal wickedness would be oftener committed by men of his villanous cast, if the folly and credulity of the poor inconsiderates who throw themselves into their hands, did not give them an easier triumph.

With what comfort must those parents reflect upon these things who have happily disposed of their daughters in marriage to a virtuous man!  And how happy the young women who find themselves safe in a worthy protection!—­If such a person as Miss Clarissa Harlowe could not escape, who can be secure?—­Since, though every rake is not a Lovelace, neither is every woman a Clarissa:  and his attempts were but proportioned to your resistance and vigilance.

My mother has commanded me to let you know her thoughts upon the whole of your sad story.  I will do it in another letter; and send it to you with this, by a special messenger.

But, for the future, if you approve of it, I will send my letters by the usual hand, (Collins’s,) to be left at the Saracen’s Head, on Snow-hill:  whither you may send your’s, (as we both used to do, to Wilson’s,) except such as we shall think fit to transmit by the post:  which I am afraid, after my next, must be directed to Mr. Hickman, as before:  since my mother is fixing a condition to our correspondence, which, I doubt, you will not comply with, though I wish you would.  This condition I shall acquaint you with by-and-by.

Mean time, begging excuse for all the harsh things in my last, of which your sweet meekness and superior greatness of soul have now made me most heartily ashamed, I beseech you, my dearest creature, to believe me to be

Your truly sympathising, and unalterable friend, Anna Howe.

LETTER LXXII

Miss Howe, to miss Clarissa Harlowe
Monday, July 10.

I now, my dearest friend, resume my pen, to obey my mother, in giving you her opinion upon your unhappy story.

She still harps upon the old string, and will have it that all your calamities are owing to your first fatal step; for she believes, (what I cannot,) that your relations had intended after one general trial more, to comply with your aversion, if they had found it to be as riveted a one, as, let me say, it was a folly to suppose it would not be found to be, after so many ridiculously-repeated experiments.