If I must speak on this subject, let me tell you that you have broken her heart.  You know not the value of the lady you have injured.  You deserve her not.  And she despises you, as she ought.

Dear Miss Howe, mingle not passion with denunciations so severe.  I must know my fate.  I will go abroad once more, if I find her absolutely irreconcileable.  But I hope she will give me leave to attend upon her, to know my doom from her own mouth.

It would be death immediate for her to see you.  And what must you be, to be able to look her in the face?

I then reproached him (with vehemence enough you may believe) on his baseness, and the evils he had made you suffer:  the distress he had reduced you to; all your friends made your enemies:  the vile house he had carried you to; hinted at his villanous arts; the dreadful arrest:  and told him of your present deplorable illness, and resolution to die rather than to have him.

He vindicated not any part of his conduct, but that of the arrest; and so solemnly protested his sorrow for his usage of you, accusing himself in the freest manner, and by deserved appellations, that I promised to lay before you this part of our conversation.  And now you have it.

My mother, as well as Mr. Hickman, believes, from what passed on this occasion, that he is touched in conscience for the wrongs he has done you:  but, by his whole behaviour, I must own, it seems to me that nothing can touch him for half an hour together.  Yet I have no doubt that he would willingly marry you; and it piques his pride, I could see, that he should be denied; as it did mine, that such a wretch had dared to think it in his power to have such a woman whenever he pleased; and that it must be accounted a condescension, and matter of obligation (by all his own family at least) that he would vouchsafe to think of marriage.

Now, my dear, you have before you the reason why I suspend the decisive negative to the ladies of his family.  My mother, Miss Lloyd, and Miss Biddulph, who were inquisitive after the subject of our retired conversation, and whose curiosity I thought it was right, in some degree, to gratify, (especially as these young ladies are of our select acquaintance,) are all of opinion that you should be his.

You will let Mr. Hickman know your whole mind; and when he acquaint me with it, I will tell you all my own.

Mean time, may the news he will bring me of the state of your health be favourable! prays, with the utmost fervency,

Your ever faithful and affectionate
Anna Howe.

LETTER L

Miss Clarissa Harlowe, to miss Howe
Thursday, July 27.

MY DEAREST MISS HOWE,

After I have thankfully acknowledged your favour in sending Mr. Hickman to visit me before you set out upon your intended journey, I must chide you (in the sincerity of that faithful love, which could not be the love it is if it would not admit of that cementing freedom) for suspending the decisive negative, which, upon such full deliberation, I had entreated you to give to Mr. Lovelace’s relations.