while you are single, you must not wonder that a short day
is intended. This day fortnight we design it to be, if you have no
objection to make that I shall approve of. But if you determine as we
would have you, and signify it to us, we shall not stand with you for a
week or so.

Your sightlines of person may perhaps make some think this alliance
disparaging. But I hope you will not put such a personal value upon
yourself: if you do, it will indeed be the less wonder that person
should weigh with you (however weak the consideration!) in another man.

Thus we parents, in justice, ought to judge: that our two daughters are
equally dear and valuable to us: if so, why should Clarissa think that
a disparagement, which Arabella would not (nor we for her) have thought
any, had the address been made to her?--You will know what I mean by
this, without my explaining myself farther.

Signify to us, now, therefore, your compliance with our wishes. And then
there is an end of your confinement. An act of oblivion, as I may call
it, shall pass upon all your former refractoriness: and you will once
more make us happy in you, and in one another. You may, in this case,
directly come down to your father and me, in his study; where we will
give you our opinions of the patterns, with our hearty forgiveness and
blessings.

Come, be a good child, as you used to be, my Clarissa. I have
(notwithstanding your past behaviour, and the hopelessness which some
have expressed in your compliance) undertaken this one time more for
you. Discredit not my hopes, my dear girl. I have promised never more
to interfere between your father and you, if this my most earnest
application succeed not. I expect you down, love. Your father expects
you down. But be sure don't let him see any thing uncheerful in your
compliance. If you come, I will clasp you to my fond heart, with as much
pleasure as ever I pressed you to it in my whole life. You don't know
what I have suffered within these few weeks past; nor ever will be able
to guess, till you come to be in my situation; which is that of a fond
and indulgent mother, praying night and day, and struggling to preserve,
against the attempts of more ungovernable spirits, the peace and union
of her family.

But you know the terms. Come not near us, if you have resolve to be
undutiful: but this, after what I have written, I hope you cannot be.

If you come directly, and, as I have said, cheerfully, as if your heart