Two neat rooms, with plain, but clean furniture, on the first floor, are mine; one they call the dining-room.

There is, up another pair of stairs, a very worthy widow-lodger, Mrs. Lovick by name; who, although of low fortunes, is much respected, as Mrs. Smith assures me, by people of condition of her acquaintance, for her piety, prudence, and understanding.  With her I propose to be well acquainted.

I thank you, my dear, for your kind, your seasonable advice and consolation.  I hope I shall have more grace given me than to despond, in the religious sense of the word:  especially as I can apply to myself the comfort you give me, that neither my will, nor my inconsiderateness, has contributed to my calamity.  But, nevertheless, the irreconcilableness of my relations, whom I love with an unabated reverence; my apprehensions of fresh violences, [this wicked man, I doubt, will not let me rest]; my being destitute of protection; my youth, my sex, my unacquaintedness with the world, subjecting me to insults; my reflections on the scandal I have given, added to the sense of the indignities I have received from a man, of whom I deserved not ill; all together will undoubtedly bring on the effect that cannot be undesirable to me.—­The situation; and, as I presume to imagine, from principles which I hope will, in due time, and by due reflection, set me above the sense of all worldly disappointments.

At present, my head is much disordered.  I have not indeed enjoyed it with any degree of clearness, since the violence done to that, and to my heart too, by the wicked arts of the abandoned creatures I was cast among.

I must have more conflicts.  At times I find myself not subdued enough to my condition.  I will welcome those conflicts as they come, as probationary ones.—­But yet my father’s malediction—­the temporary part so strangely and so literally completed!—­I cannot, however, think, when my mind is strongest—­But what is the story of Isaac, and Jacob, and Esau, and of Rebekah’s cheating the latter of the blessing designed for him, (in favour of Jacob,) given us for in the 27th chapter of Genesis?  My father used, I remember, to enforce the doctrine deducible from it, on his children, by many arguments.  At least, therefore, he must believe there is great weight in the curse he has announced; and shall I not be solicitous to get it revoked, that he may not hereafter be grieved, for my sake, that he did not revoke it?

All I will at present add, are my thanks to your mother for her indulgence to us; due compliments to Mr. Hickman; and my request, that you will believe me to be, to my last hour, and beyond it, if possible, my beloved friend, and my dearer self (for what is now myself!)

Your obliged and affectionate
Clarissa Harlowe.

LETTER III

Mr. Lovelace, to John Belford, ESQ. 
Friday, July 7.