Your father is
determined. Have I not told you there is no receding; that the honour as
well as the interest of the family is concerned? Be ingenuous: you used
to be so, even occasionally against yourself:--Who at the long run must
submit--all of us to you; or you to all of us?--If you intend to yield
at last if you find you cannot conquer, yield now, and with a grace--for
yield you must, or be none of our child.

I wept. I knew not what to say; or rather how to express what I had to
say.

Take notice, that there are flaws in your grandfather's will: not
a shilling of that estate will be yours, if you do not yield. Your
grandfather left it to you, as a reward of your duty to him and to
us--You will justly forfeit it, if--

Permit me, good Madam, to say, that, if it were unjustly bequeathed me,
I ought not to wish to have it. But I hope Mr. Solmes will be apprised
of these flaws.

This is very pertly said, Clarissa: but reflect, that the forfeiture of
that estate, through your opposition, will be attended with the total
loss of your father's favour: and then how destitute must you be; how
unable to support yourself; and how many benevolent designs and good
actions must you give up!

I must accommodate myself, Madam, in the latter case, to my
circumstance: much only is required where much is given. It becomes me
to be thankful for what I have had. I have reason to bless you, Madam,
and my good Mrs. Norton, for bringing me up to be satisfied with little;
with much less, I will venture to say, than my father's indulgence
annually confers upon me.--And then I thought of the old Roman and his
lentils.

What perverseness! said my mother.--But if you depend upon the favour of
either or both of your uncles, vain will be that dependence: they
will give you up, I do assure you, if your father does, and absolutely
renounce you.

I am sorry, Madam, that I have had so little merit as to have made no
deeper impressions of favour for me in their hearts: but I will love and
honour them as long as I live.

All this, Clarissa, makes your prepossession in a certain man's favour
the more evident. Indeed, your brother and sister cannot go any where,
but they hear of these prepossessions.

It is a great grief to me, Madam, to be made the subject of the public
talk: but I hope you will have the goodness to excuse me for observing,
that the authors of my disgrace within doors, the talkers of my
prepossession without, and the repor