You will be pleased to direct for me at your uncle Antony’s.

Permit me, my dearest Cousin, till I can procure a happy reconciliation between you and your father, and brother, and uncles, to supply the place to you of all those near relations, as well as that of

Your affectionate kinsman, and humble servant,
Wm. Morden.

LETTER XLV

Miss Clarissa Harlowe, to Wm. Morden, Esq. 
Thursday, Aug. 31.

I most heartily congratulate you, dear Sir, on your return to your native country.

I heard with much pleasure that you were come; but I was both afraid and ashamed, till you encouraged me by a first notice, to address myself to you.

How consoling is it to my wounded heart to find that you have not been carried away by that tide of resentment and displeasure with which I have been so unhappily overwhelmed—­but that, while my still nearer relations have not thought fit to examine into the truth of vile reports raised against me, you have informed yourself of my innocence, and generously credited the information!

I have not the least reason to doubt Mr. Lovelace’s sincerity in his offers of marriage; nor that all his relations are heartily desirous of ranking me among them.  I have had noble instances of their esteem for me, on their apprehending that my father’s displeasure must have had absolutely refused their pressing solicitations in their kinsman’s favour as well as his own.

Nor think me, my dear Cousin, blamable for refusing him.  I had given Mr. Lovelace no reason to think me a weak creature.  If I had, a man of his character might have thought himself warranted to endeavour to take ungenerous advantage of the weakness he had been able to inspire.  The consciousness of my own weakness (in that case) might have brought me to a composition with his wickedness.

I can indeed forgive him.  But that is, because I think his crimes have set me above him.  Can I be above the man, Sir, to whom I shall give my hand and my vows, and with them a sanction to the most premeditated baseness?  No, Sir, let me say, that your cousin Clarissa, were she likely to live many years, and that (if she married not this man) in penury or want, despised and forsaken by all her friends, puts not so high a value upon the conveniencies of life, nor upon life itself, as to seek to re-obtain the one, or to preserve the other, by giving such a sanction:  a sanction, which (were she to perform her duty,) would reward the violator.

Nor is it so much from pride as from principle that I say this.  What, Sir! when virtue, when chastity, is the crown of a woman, and particularly of a wife, shall form an attempt upon her’s but upon a presumption that she was capable of receiving his offered hand when he had found himself mistaken in the vile opinion he had conceived of her?  Hitherto he has not had reason to think me weak.  Nor will I give an instance so flagrant, that weak I am in a point in which it would be criminal to be found weak.