only to write six or eight lines,
to inquire after your health: for, having heard nothing from you, I
feared indeed, that you had been, and still were, too ill to write. But
no sooner did my pen begin to blot the paper, but my sad heart hurried it
into length. The apprehensions I had lain under, that I should not be
able to get away; the fatigue I had in effecting my escape: the
difficulty of procuring a lodging for myself; having disliked the people
of two houses, and those of a third disliking me; for you must think I
made a frighted appearance--these, together with the recollection of what
I had suffered from him, and my farther apprehensions of my insecurity,
and my desolate circumstances, had so disordered me, that I remember I
rambled strangely in that letter.

In short, I thought it, on re-perusal, a half-distracted one: but I then
despaired, (were I to begin again,) of writing better: so I let it go:
and can have no excuse for directing it as I did, if the cause of the
incoherence in it will not furnish me with a very pitiable one.

The letter I received from your mother was a dreadful blow to me. But
nevertheless it had the good effect upon me (labouring, as I did just
then, under a violent fit of vapourish despondency, and almost yielding
to it) which profuse bleeding and blisterings have in paralytic or
apoplectical strokes; reviving my attention, and restoring me to spirits
to combat the evils I was surrounded by--sluicing off, and diverting into
a new channel, (if I may be allowed another metaphor,) the overcharging
woes which threatened once more to overwhelm my intellects.

But yet I most sincerely lamented, (and still lament,) in your mother's
words, That I cannot be unhappy by myself: and was grieved, not only for
the trouble I had given you before; but for the new one I had brought
upon you by my inattention.

[She then gives the substance of the letters she wrote to Mrs. Norton, to
Lady Betty Lawrance, and to Mrs. Hodges; as also of their answers;
whereby she detected all Mr. Lovelace's impostures. She proceeds
as follows:]

I cannot, however, forbear to wonder how the vile Tomlinson could come at
the knowledge of several of the things he told me of, and which
contributed to give me confidence in him.*

* The attentive reader need not be referred back for what the Lady
nevertheless could not account for, as she knew not that Mr. Lovelace had
come at Miss Howe's lette