will not make
you glow, as you read--upon my word I will not.--Yet, my dear, don't you
find at your heart somewhat unusual make it go throb, throb, throb, as
you read just here?--If you do, don't be ashamed to own it--it is your
generosity, my love, that's all.--But as the Roman augur said, Caesar,
beware of the Ides of March!

Adieu, my dearest friend.--Forgive, and very speedily, by the new found
expedient, tell me that you forgive,

Your ever-affectionate, ANNA HOWE.

LETTER XI

MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE, TO MISS HOWE WEDNESDAY, MARCH 1.

You both nettled and alarmed me, my dearest Miss Howe, by the concluding
part of your last. At first reading it, I did not think it necessary,
said I to myself, to guard against a critic, when I was writing to so
dear a friend. But then recollecting myself, is there not more in it,
said I, than the result of a vein so naturally lively? Surely I must
have been guilty of an inadvertence. Let me enter into the close
examination of myself which my beloved friend advises.

I do so; and cannot own any of the glow, any of the throbs you
mention.--Upon my word I will repeat, I cannot. And yet the passages in
my letter, upon which you are so humourously severe, lay me fairly open
to your agreeable raillery. I own they do. And I cannot tell what turn
my mind had taken to dictate so oddly to my pen.

But, pray now--is it saying so much, when one, who has no very
particular regard to any man, says, there are some who are preferable to
others? And is it blamable to say, they are the preferable, who are not
well used by one's relations; yet dispense with that usage out of regard
to one's self which they would otherwise resent? Mr. Lovelace, for
instance, I may be allowed to say, is a man to be preferred to Mr.
Solmes; and that I do prefer him to that man: but, surely, this may be
said without its being a necessary consequence that I must be in love
with him.

Indeed I would not be in love with him, as it is called, for the world:
First, because I have no opinion of his morals; and think it a fault in
which our whole family (my brother excepted) has had a share, that he
was permitted to visit us with a hope, which, however, being distant,
did not, as I have observed heretofore,* entitle any of us to call
him to account for such of his immoralities as came to our ears. Next,
because I think him to be a vain man, capable of triumphing (secretly at
least) over a person whose heart he th