be
from London.

Heaven preserve you in honour and safety, is my prayer.

What you do for change of clothes, I cannot imagine.

It is amazing to me what your relations can mean by distressing you,
as they seem resolved to do. I see they will throw you into his arms,
whether you will or not.

I send this by Robert, for dispatch-sake: and can only repeat the
hitherto-rejected offer of my best services. Adieu, my dearest friend.
Believe me ever

Your affectionate and faithful ANNA HOWE.

LETTER XLI

MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE, TO MISS HOWE TUESDAY, APRIL 20.

I should think myself utterly unworthy of your friendship did not my
own concerns, heavy as they are, so engross me, that I could not find
leisure for a few lines to declare to my beloved friend my sincere
disapprobation of her conduct, in an instance where she is so generously
faulty, that the consciousness of that very generosity may hide from
her the fault, which I, more than any other, have reason to deplore, as
being the unhappy occasion of it.

You know, you say, that your account of the contentions between your
mother and you will trouble me; and so you bid me spare myself the pains
to tell you that they do.

You did not use, my dear, to forbid me thus beforehand. You were wont
to say, you loved me the better for my expostulations with you on that
acknowledged warmth and quickness of your temper which your own good
sense taught you to be apprehensive of. What though I have so miserably
fallen, and am unhappy, if ever I had any judgment worth regarding, it
is now as much worth as ever, because I can give it as freely against
myself as against any body else. And shall I not, when there seems to be
an infection in my fault, and that it leads you likewise to resolve to
carry on a correspondence against prohibition, expostulate with you upon
it; when whatever consequences flow from your disobedience, they but
widen my error, which is as the evil root, from which such sad branches
spring?

The mind that can glory in being capable of so noble, so firm, so
unshaken friendship, as that of my dear Miss Howe; a friendship which
no casualty or distress can lessen, but which increases with the
misfortunes of its friend--such a mind must be above taking amiss
the well-meant admonitions of that distinguished friend. I will not
therefore apologize for my freedom on this subject: and the less need I,
when that freedom is the result of an affection, in the very