This event is nearly as interesting to me as it is to you.  If you are more grieved than I, there can be but one reason for it; and that’s at your heart!—­I had rather lose all the friends I have in the world, (yourself in the number,) than this divine lady; and shall be unhappy whenever I think of her sufferings, and of her merit; though I have nothing to reproach myself by reason of the former.

I say not this, just now, so much to reflect upon you as to express my own grief; though your conscience I suppose, will make you think otherwise.

Your poor fellow, who says that he begs for his life, in desiring to be dispatched back with a letter, tears this from me—­else, perhaps, (for I am just sent for down,) a quarter of an hour would make you—­not easy indeed—­but certain—­and that, in a state like your’s, to a mind like your’s, is a relief.

Thursday afternoon, four o’clock.

LETTER III

Mr. Belford, to Richard Mowbray, Esq. 
Thursday afternoon.

DEAR MOWBRAY,

I am glad to hear you are in town.  Throw yourself the moment this comes to your hand, (if possible with Tourville,) in the way of the man who least of all men deserves the love of the worthy heart; but most that of thine and Tourville; else the news I shall most probably send him within an hour or two, will make annihilation the greatest blessing he has to wish for.

You will find him between Piccadilly and Kensington, most probably on horseback, riding backwards and forwards in a crazy way; or put up, perhaps, at some inn or tavern in the way—­a waiter possibly, if so, watching for his servant’s return to him from me.

***

His man Will. is just come to me.  He will carry this to you in his way back, and be your director.  Hie away in a coach, or any how.  Your being with him may save either his or a servant’s life.  See the blessed effects of triumphant libertinism!  Sooner or later it comes home to us, and all concludes in gall and bitterness!

Adieu. 
J. Belford.

LETTER IV

Mr. Lovelace, to John Belford, Esq.

Curse upon the Colonel, and curse upon the writer of the last letter I received, and upon all the world!  Thou to pretend to be as much interested in my Clarissa’s fate as myself!—­’Tis well for one of us that this was not said to me, instead of written.—­Living or dying, she is mine—­and only mine.  Have I not earned her dearly?—­Is not d——­n——­n likely to be the purchase to me, though a happy eternity will be her’s?

An eternal separation!—­O God!  O God!—­How can I bear that thought!—­But yet there is life!—­Yet, therefore, hope—­enlarge my hope, and thou shalt be my good genius, and I will forgive thee every thing.