ed away; poorly
enough tricked away, I must needs say; though others who had been first
guilty of so rash a step as the meeting of him was, might have been so
deceived and surprised as well as I.

'After remaining some time at a farm-house in the country, and behaving
to me all the time with honour, he brought me to handsome lodgings in
town till still better provision could be made for me. But they proved
to be (as he indeed knew and designed) at a vile, a very vile creature's;
though it was long before I found her to be so; for I knew nothing of the
town, or its ways.

'There is no repeating what followed: such unprecedented vile arts!--For
I gave him no opportunity to take me at any disreputable advantage.'--

And here (half covering her sweet face, with her handkerchief put to her
tearful eyes) she stopt.

Hastily, as if she would fly from the hateful remembrance, she resumed:--
'I made escape afterward from the abominable house in his absence, and
came to your's: and this gentleman has almost prevailed on me to think,
that the ungrateful man did not connive at the vile arrest: which was
made, no doubt, in order to get me once more to those wicked lodgings:
for nothing do I owe them, except I were to pay them'--[she sighed, and
again wiped her charming eyes--adding in a softer, lower voice]--'for
being ruined.'

Indeed, Madam, said I, guilty, abominably guilty, as he is in all the
rest, he is innocent of this last wicked outrage.

'Well, and so I wish him to be. That evil, heavy as it was, is one of
the slightest evils I have suffered. But hence you'll observe, Mrs.
Lovick, (for you seemed this morning curious to know if I were not a
wife,) that I never was married.--You, Mr. Belford, no doubt, knew before
that I am no wife: and now I never will be one. Yet, I bless God, that
I am not a guilty creature!

'As to my parentage, I am of no mean family; I have in my own right, by
the intended favour of my grandfather, a fortune not contemptible:
independent of my father; if I had pleased; but I never will please.

'My father is very rich. I went by another name when I came to you
first: but that was to avoid being discovered to the perfidious man: who
now engages, by this gentleman, not to molest me.

'My real name you now know to be Harlowe: Clarissa Harlowe. I am not yet
twenty years of age.

'I have an excellent mother, as well as father; a woman of family, and
fine sense--worthy of a better child!--