You tell me, that Lady Betty Lawrance, and your cousin Montague, were here to take leave of me; but that I was asleep, and could not be waked.  So you told me at first I was married, you know, and that you were my husband—­Ah!  Lovelace! look to what you say.—­But let not them, (for they will sport with my misery,) let not that Lady Betty, let not that Miss Montague, whatever the real ones may do; nor Mrs. Sinclair neither, nor any of her lodgers, nor her nieces, come to see me in my place—­real ones, I say; for, Lovelace, I shall find out all your villanies in time—­ indeed I shall—­so put me there as soon as you can—­it is for your good—­ then all will pass for ravings that I can say, as, I doubt no many poor creatures’ exclamations do pass, though there may be too much truth in them for all that—­and you know I began to be mad at Hampstead—­so you said.—­Ah! villanous man! what have you not to answer for!

***

A little interval seems to be lent me.  I had begun to look over what I have written.  It is not fit for any one to see, so far as I have been able to re-peruse it:  but my head will not hold, I doubt, to go through it all.  If therefore I have not already mentioned my earnest desire, let me tell you it is this:  that I be sent out of this abominable house without delay, and locked up in some private mad-house about this town; for such, it seems, there are; never more to be seen, or to be produced to any body, except in your own vindication, if you should be charged with the murder of my person; a much lighter crime than that of honour, which the greatest villain on earth has robbed me of.  And deny me not this my last request, I beseech you; and one other, and that is, never to let me see you more!  This surely may be granted to

The miserably abused
Clarissa Harlowe.

***

I will not bear thy heavy preachments, Belford, upon this affecting letter.  So, not a word of that sort!  The paper, thou’lt see, is blistered with the tears even of the hardened transcriber; which has made her ink run here and there.

Mrs. Sinclair is a true heroine, and, I think, shames us all.  And she is a woman too!  Thou’lt say, the beset things corrupted become the worst.  But this is certain, that whatever the sex set their hearts upon, they make thorough work of it.  And hence it is, that a mischief which would end in simple robbery among men rogues, becomes murder, if a woman be in it.

I know thou wilt blame me for having had recourse to art.  But do not physicians prescribe opiates in acute cases, where the violence of the disorder would be apt to throw the patient into a fever or delirium?  I aver, that my motive for this expedient was mercy; nor could it be any thing else.  For a rape, thou knowest, to us rakes, is far from being an undesirable thing.  Nothing but the law stands in our way, upon that account; and the opinion of what a modest woman will suffer rather than become a viva voce accuser, lessens much an honest fellow’s apprehensions on that score.  Then, if these somnivolencies [I hate the word opiates on this occasion,] have turned her head, that is an effect they frequently have upon some constitutions; and in this case was rather the fault of the dose than the design of the giver.