antage gained,
thou wouldest proceed to attempt another. Thy habitual aversion to
wedlock too well I knew; and indeed thou avowest thy hope to bring her to
cohabitation, in that very letter in which thou pretendest trial to be
thy principal view.**

* See Vol. III. Letter XVIII.
** Ibid. See also Letters XVI. and XVII. of that volume.

But do not even thy own frequent and involuntary remorses, when thou hast
time, place, company, and every other circumstance, to favour thee in thy
wicked design, convince thee, that there can be no room for a hope so
presumptuous?--Why then, since thou wouldest choose to marry her rather
than lose her, wilt thou make her hate thee for ever?

But if thou darest to meditate personal trial, and art sincere in thy
resolution to reward her, as she behaves in it, let me beseech thee to
remove her from this vile house. That will be to give her and thy
conscience fair play. So entirely now does the sweet deluded excellence
depend upon her supposed happier prospects, that thou needest not to fear
that she will fly from thee, or that she will wish to have recourse to
that scheme of Miss Howe, which has put thee upon what thou callest thy
master-strokes.

But whatever be thy determination on this head; and if I write not in
time, but that thou hast actually pulled off the mask; let it not be one
of the devices, if thou wouldest avoid the curses of every heart, and
hereafter of thy own, to give her, no not for one hour, (be her
resentment ever so great,) into the power of that villanous woman, who
has, if possible, less remorse than thyself; and whose trade it is to
break the resisting spirit, and utterly to ruin the heart unpractised in
evil.--O Lovelace, Lovelace, how many dreadful stories could this horrid
woman tell the sex! And shall that of a Clarissa swell the guilty list?

But this I might have spared. Of this, devil as thou art, thou canst not
be capable. Thou couldst not enjoy a triumph so disgraceful to thy
wicked pride, as well as to humanity.

Shouldest thou think, that the melancholy spectacle hourly before me has
made me more serious than usual, perhaps thou wilt not be mistaken. But
nothing more is to be inferred from hence (were I even to return to my
former courses) but that whenever the time of cool reflection comes,
whether brought on by our own disasters, or by those of others, we shall
undoubtedly, if capable of thought, and if we have time for it, think in
t