s over, and then to try to reconcile me to my odious
husband.

"How, my dear, am I driven!"

_April_ 8. Whether you will blame me or not I cannot tell. I have
deposited a letter to Mr. Lovelace confirming my resolution to leave
this house on Monday next. I tell him I shall not bring any clothes than
those I have on, lest I be suspected. That it will be best to go to a
private lodging near Lady Betty Lawrance's that it may not appear to the
world I have refuged myself with his family; that he shall instantly
leave me nor come near me but by my leave, and that if I find myself in
danger of being discovered and carried back by violence, I will throw
myself into the protection of Lady Betty or Lady Sarah.

"Oh, my dear, what a sad thing is the necessity forced upon me for all
this contrivance!"

_II.--In London_

Clarissa, after staying in lodgings at St. Albans, is persuaded by
Lovelace that she will be safer from her family in London. After
refusing a proposal for an immediate marriage, she therefore moves to
London to lodge in a house recommended as thoroughly respectable by
Lovelace, but which in reality is kept by a widow, Mrs. Sinclair, of no
good repute, who is in the pay of Lovelace.

Clarissa to her friend, Miss Howe:

"_April 26._ At length, my dear, I am in London. My lodgings are neatly
furnished, and though I like not the old gentlewoman, yet she seems
obliging, and her kinswomen are genteel young people.

"I am exceedingly out of humour with Mr. Lovelace, and have great reason
to be so. He began by letting me know that he had been to inquire the
character of the widow. It was well enough, he said, but as she lived by
letting lodgings and had other rooms in the houses which might be taken
by the enemy, he knew no better way than to take them all, unless I
would remove to others.

"It was easy to see he spoke the slighter of the widow to have a
pretence to lodge here himself, and he frankly owned that if I chose to
stay here he could not think of leaving me for six hours together. He
had prepared the widow to expect that we should be here only a few days,
till we could fix ourselves in a house suitable to our condition.

"'Fix _ourselves_ in a house, Mr. Lovelace?' I said. 'Pray in what
light?'

"'My dearest life, hear me with patience. I am afraid I have been too
forward, for my friends in town conclude me to be married.'

"'Surely, sir, you have not presumed----'

"'Hear me, dearest creatu