“How, my dear, am I driven!”

April 8.  Whether you will blame me or not I cannot tell.  I have deposited a letter to Mr. Lovelace confirming my resolution to leave this house on Monday next.  I tell him I shall not bring any clothes than those I have on, lest I be suspected.  That it will be best to go to a private lodging near Lady Betty Lawrance’s that it may not appear to the world I have refuged myself with his family; that he shall instantly leave me nor come near me but by my leave, and that if I find myself in danger of being discovered and carried back by violence, I will throw myself into the protection of Lady Betty or Lady Sarah.

“Oh, my dear, what a sad thing is the necessity forced upon me for all this contrivance!”

II.—­In London

Clarissa, after staying in lodgings at St. Albans, is persuaded by Lovelace that she will be safer from her family in London.  After refusing a proposal for an immediate marriage, she therefore moves to London to lodge in a house recommended as thoroughly respectable by Lovelace, but which in reality is kept by a widow, Mrs. Sinclair, of no good repute, who is in the pay of Lovelace.

Clarissa to her friend, Miss Howe: 

“April 26. At length, my dear, I am in London.  My lodgings are neatly furnished, and though I like not the old gentlewoman, yet she seems obliging, and her kinswomen are genteel young people.

“I am exceedingly out of humour with Mr. Lovelace, and have great reason to be so.  He began by letting me know that he had been to inquire the character of the widow.  It was well enough, he said, but as she lived by letting lodgings and had other rooms in the houses which might be taken by the enemy, he knew no better way than to take them all, unless I would remove to others.

“It was easy to see he spoke the slighter of the widow to have a pretence to lodge here himself, and he frankly owned that if I chose to stay here he could not think of leaving me for six hours together.  He had prepared the widow to expect that we should be here only a few days, till we could fix ourselves in a house suitable to our condition.

“‘Fix ourselves in a house, Mr. Lovelace?’ I said.  ’Pray in what light?’

“’My dearest life, hear me with patience.  I am afraid I have been too forward, for my friends in town conclude me to be married.’

“‘Surely, sir, you have not presumed——­’

“’Hear me, dearest creature.  You have received with favour my addresses, yet, by declining my fervent tender of myself you have given me apprehension of delay.  Your brother’s schemes are not given up.  I have taken care to give Mrs. Sinclair a reason why two apartments are necessary for us in our retirement.’

“I raved at him.  I would have flung from him, yet where could I go?

“Still, he insisted upon the propriety of appearing to be married.  ’But since you dislike what I have said, let me implore you,’ he added, ’to give a sanction to it by naming an early day—­would to Heaven it were to-morrow!’