, SEN. ESQ.

MOST DEAR SIR,

With exulting confidence now does your emboldened daughter come into your
awful presence by these lines, who dared not, but upon this occasion, to
look up to you with hopes of favour and forgiveness; since, when this
comes to your hands, it will be out of her power ever to offend you more.

And now let me bless you, my honoured Papa, and bless you, as I write,
upon my knees, for all the benefits I have received from your indulgence:
for your fond love to me in the days of my prattling innocence: for the
virtuous education you gave me: and for, the crown of all, the happy end,
which, through divine grace, by means of that virtuous education, I hope,
by the time you will receive this, I shall have made. And let me beg of
you, dear, venerable Sir, to blot out from your remembrance, if possible,
the last unhappy eight months; and then I shall hope to be remembered
with advantage for the pleasure you had the goodness to take in your
Clarissa.

Still on her knees, let your poor penitent implore your forgiveness of
all her faults and follies; more especially of that fatal error which
threw her out of your protection.

When you know, Sir, that I have never been faulty in my will; that ever
since my calamity became irretrievable, I have been in a state of
preparation; that I have the strongest assurance that the Almighty has
accepted my unfeigned repentance; and that by this time you will (as I
humbly presume to hope,) have been the means of adding one to the number
of the blessed; you will have reason for joy rather than sorrow. Since,
had I escaped the snares by which I was entangled, I might have wanted
those exercises which I look upon now as so many mercies dispensed to
wean me betimes from a world that presented itself to me with prospects
too alluring; and in that case (too easily satisfied with the worldly
felicity) I might not have attained to that blessedness, in which now,
on your reading of this, I humbly presume, (through the divine goodness,)
I am rejoicing.

That the Almighty, in his own good time, will bring you, Sir, and my
ever-honoured mother, after a series of earthly felicities, of which my
unhappy fault be the only interruption, (and very grievous I know that
must have been,) to rejoice in the same blessed state, is the repeated
prayer of, Sir,

Your now happy daughter,
CLARISSA HARLOWE.

LETTER XV

TO THE EVER-HONOURED MRS. HARLOWE

HONOURED MADAM,

Th