y not be a bad woman--but neither are
all men, any more than all women alike--God forbid they should be like
you!

Alas! you have killed my head among you--I don't say who did it!--God
forgive you all!--But had it not been better to have put me out of all
your ways at once? You might safely have done it! For nobody would
require me at your hands--no, not a soul--except, indeed, Miss Howe would
have said, when she should see you, What, Lovelace, have you done with
Clarissa Harlowe?--And then you could have given any slight, gay answer--
sent her beyond sea; or, she has run away from me, as she did from her
parents. And this would have been easily credited; for you know,
Lovelace, she that could run away from them, might very well run away
from you.

But this is nothing to what I wanted to say. Now I have it.

I have lost it again--This foolish wench comes teasing me--for what
purpose should I eat? For what end should I wish to live?--I tell thee,
Dorcas, I will neither eat nor drink. I cannot be worse than I am.

I will do as you'd have me--good Dorcas, look not upon me so fiercely--
but thou canst not look so bad as I have seen somebody look.

Mr. Lovelace, now that I remember what I took pen in hand to say, let me
hurry off my thoughts, lest I lose them again--here I am sensible--and
yet I am hardly sensible neither--but I know my head is not as it should
be, for all that--therefore let me propose one thing to you: it is for
your good--not mine; and this is it:

I must needs be both a trouble and an expense to you. And here my uncle
Harlowe, when he knows how I am, will never wish any man to have me: no,
not even you, who have been the occasion of it--barbarous and ungrateful!
--A less complicated villany cost a Tarquin--but I forget what I would
say again--

Then this is it--I never shall be myself again: I have been a very wicked
creature--a vain, proud, poor creature, full of secret pride--which I
carried off under an humble guise, and deceived every body--my sister
says so--and now I am punished--so let me be carried out of this house,
and out of your sight; and let me be put into that Bedlam privately,
which once I saw: but it was a sad sight to me then! Little as I thought
what I should come to myself!--That is all I would say: this is all I
have to wish for--then I shall be out of all your ways; and I shall be
taken care of; and bread and water without your tormentings, will be
dainties: and my s