He even hinted (as from your relations indeed) that it is impossible but there most be some will where there is much love.

These sort of reflections are enough to make a woman, who has at heart her own honour and the honour of her sex, to look about her, and consider what she is doing when she enters into an intimacy with these wretches; since it is plain, that whenever she throws herself into the power of a man, and leaves for him her parents or guardians, every body will believe it to be owing more to her good luck than to her discretion if there be not an end of her virtue:  and let the man be ever such a villain to her, she must take into her own bosom a share of his guilty baseness.

I am writing to general cases.  You, my dear, are out of the question.  Your story, as I have heretofore said, will afford a warning as well as an example:* For who is it that will not infer, that if a person of your fortune, character, and merit, could not escape ruin, after she had put herself into the power of her hyaena, what can a thoughtless, fond, giddy creature expect?

* See Vol.  IV.  Letter XXIII.

Every man, they will say, is not a Lovelace—­True:  but then, neither is every woman a Clarissa.  And allow for the one and for the other the example must be of general use.

I prepared Mr. Morden to expect your appointment of Mr. Belford for an office that we both hope he will have no occasion to act in (nor any body else) for many, very many years to come.  He was at first startled at it:  but, upon hearing such of your reasons as had satisfied me, he only said that such an appointment, were it to take place, would exceedingly affect his other cousins.

He told me, he had a copy of Lovelace’s letter to you, imploring your pardon, and offering to undergo any penance to procure it;* and also of your answer to it.**

* See Vol.  VII.  Letter LXXIX. ** Ibid.  Letter LXXXIII.

I find he is willing to hope that a marriage between you may still take place; which, he says, will heal up all breaches.

I would have written much more—­on the following particulars especially; to wit, of the wretched man’s hunting you out of your lodgings:  of your relations’ strange implacableness, [I am in haste, and cannot think of a word you would like better just now:] of your last letter to Lovelace, to divert him from pursuing you:  of your aunt Hervey’s penitential conversation with Mrs. Norton:  of Mr. Wyerley’s renewed address:  of your lessons to me in Hickman’s behalf, so approvable, were the man more so than he is; but indeed I am offended with him at this instant, and have been for these two days:  of your sister’s transportation-project:  and of twenty and twenty other things:  but am obliged to leave off, to attend my two cousins Spilsworth, and my cousin Herbert, who are come to visit us on account of my mother’s illness—­I will therefore dispatch these by Rogers; and if my mother gets well soon (as I hope she will) I am resolved to see you in town, and tell you every thing that now is upon my mind; and particularly, mingling my soul with your’s, how much I am, and will ever be, my dearest, dear friend,