I may be to blame, Jack, for suffering this wretch to give herself these airs; but her coming in was without my orders.

The old beldam, throwing herself into a chair, fell a blubbering and exclaiming.  And the pacifying of her, and endeavouring to reconcile the lady to her, took up till near one o’clock.

And thus, between terror, and the late hour, and what followed, she was diverted from the thoughts of getting out of the house to Mrs. Leeson’s, or any where else.

LETTER XII

MR. LOVELACE, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ.  TUESDAY MORNING, JUNE 13.

And now, Belford, I can go no farther.  The affair is over.  Clarissa lives.  And I am

Your humble servant,
R. Lovelace.

[The whole of this black transaction is given by the injured lady to Miss Howe, in her subsequent letters, dated Thursday, July 6.  See Letters LXVII.  LXVIII.  LXIX.]

LETTER XIII

Mr. Belford, to Robert Lovelace, ESQ. 
Watford, Wedn.  Jan. 14.

O thou savage-hearted monster!  What work hast thou made in one guilty hour, for a whole age of repentance!

I am inexpressibly concerned at the fate of this matchless lady!  She could not have fallen into the hands of any other man breathing, and suffered as she has done with thee.

I had written a great part of another long letter to try to soften thy flinty heart in her favour; for I thought it but too likely that thou shouldst succeed in getting her back again to the accursed woman’s.  But I find it would have been too late, had I finished it, and sent it away.  Yet cannot I forbear writing, to urge thee to make the only amends thou now canst make her, by a proper use of the license thou hast obtained.

Poor, poor lady!  It is a pain to me that I ever saw her.  Such an adorer of virtue to be sacrificed to the vilest of her sex; and thou their implement in the devil’s hand, for a purpose so base, so ungenerous, so inhumane!—­Pride thyself, O cruellest of men! in this reflection; and that thy triumph over a woman, who for thy sake was abandoned of every friend she had in the world, was effected; not by advantages taken of her weakness and credulity; but by the blackest artifice; after a long course of studied deceits had been tried to no purpose.

I can tell thee, it is well either for thee or for me, that I am not the brother of the lady.  Had I been her brother, her violation must have been followed by the blood of one of us.

Excuse me, Lovelace; and let not the lady fare the worse for my concern for her.  And yet I have but one other motive to ask thy excuse; and that is, because I owe to thy own communicative pen the knowledge I have of thy barbarous villany, since thou mightest, if thou wouldst, have passed it upon me for a common seduction.