r in its place.

Without knowing the house was so very vile a house from your intended
information, I disliked the people too much, ever voluntarily to have
returned to it. But had you really written such cautions about
Tomlinson, and the house, as you seem to have purposed to do, they must,
had they come in time, have been of infinite service to me. But not one
word of either, whatever was your intention, did you mention to me, in
that first of the three letters you so warmly TELL me you did send me. I
will enclose it to convince you.*

* The letter she encloses was Mr. Lovelace's forged one. See Vol. V.
Letter XXX.

But your account of your messenger's delivering to me your second
letter, and the description he gives of me, as lying upon a couch, in a
strange way, bloated, and flush-coloured; you don't know how, absolutely
puzzles and confounds me.

Lord have mercy upon the poor Clarissa Harlowe! What can this mean!--Who
was the messenger you sent? Was he one of Lovelace's creatures too!--
Could nobody come near me but that man's confederates, either setting out
so, or made so? I know not what to make of any one syllable of this!
Indeed I don't.

Let me see. You say, this was before I went from Hampstead! My
intellects had not then been touched!--nor had I ever been surprised by
wine, [strange if I had!]: How then could I be found in such a strange
way, bloated and flush-coloured; you don't know how!--Yet what a vile,
what a hateful figure has your messenger represented me to have made!

But indeed I know nothing of any messenger from you.

Believing myself secure at Hampstead, I staid longer there than I would
have done, in hopes of the letter promised me in your short one of the
9th, brought me by my own messenger, in which you undertake to send for
and engage Mrs. Townsend in my favour.*

* See Vol. V. Letter XXIX.

I wondered I had not heard from you: and was told you were sick; and, at
another time, that your mother and you had had words on my account, and
that you had refused to admit Mr. Hickman's visits upon it: so that I
supposed, at one time, that you were not able to write; at another, that
your mother's prohibition had its due force with you. But now I have no
doubt that the wicked man must have intercepted your letter; and I wish
he found not means to corrupt your messenger to tell you so strange a
story.

It was on Sunday, June 11, you say, that the man gave it me. I was at