ose Mind was
incapable of Love, could not be amiable, nor have any of those gentle
Qualities which chiefly adorn the female Character. And as to her
whining after her Papa and Mamma, who had used her so cruelly, (added
he) I think 'tis contemptible in her."

"But, Sir, (said Miss _Gibson_) please only to consider, first,
_Clarissa_ is accused of want of Love, and then in a Moment she is
condemned for not being able suddenly to tear from her Bosom an
Affection that had been daily growing and improving from the Time of her
Birth, and this built on the greatest paternal Indulgence imaginable.
Affections that have taken such deep Root, are little Treasures hoarded
up in the good Mind, and cannot be torn thence without causing the
strongest convulsive Pangs in the Heart, where they have been long
nourished: And when they are so very easily given up as you now, Sir,
seem to contend for, I confess I am very apt to suspect they have only
been talked of by the Persons who can part with them with so little
Pain, either from Hypocrisy, or from another very obvious Cause, namely,
the using Words we are accustomed to hear, without so much as thinking
of their Meaning. Such Hearts I think may be much more properly compared
to the Hardness of Marble, than could that of the gentle _Clarissa_.

"There is in her Behaviour, I own, a good deal of apparent Indifference
to _Lovelace_; but let her Situation and his manner of treating her be
considered, and I fancy the whole will be seen in a different Light from
what it may appear on the first View. She has confessed to Miss _Howe_,
that she could prefer him to all the Men she ever saw; and that Friend
of her Heart, to whom her very inmost Thoughts were laid open all along,
pronounces her to be in Love with him. It is not from Hypocrisy that she
does not confess the Charge, but from the Reason Miss _Howe_ gives, when
she says;

_I believe you did not intend Reserve to me, for two Reasons, I
believe you did not; first, because you say you did not: Next,
because you have not as yet been able to convince yourself how it
is to be with you; and, persecuted as you are, how so to separate
the Effects that spring from the two Causes (Persecution and Love)
as to give to each its particular Due._

"That _Clarissa_ positively did not intend to go off with _Lovelace_
when she met him, to me is very plain; nor could he have prevailed on
her, had not the Terrors raised in her Mi