t shall come out, that the person within the garden was his
corrupted implement, employed to frighten me away with him, do you
think, my dear, that I shall not have reason to hate him and myself
still more? I hope his heart cannot be so deep and so vile a one: I hope
it cannot! But how came it to pass, that one man could get out at the
garden-door, and no more? how, that that man kept aloof, as it were,
and pursued us not; nor ran back to alarm the house? my fright, and my
distance, would not let me be certain; but really this man, as I now
recollect, had the air of that vile Joseph Leman.

O why, why, my dear friends!--But wherefore blame I them, when I had
argued myself into a hope, not improbable, that even the dreadful
trial I was to undergo so soon might turn out better than if I had been
directly carried away from the presence of my once indulgent parents,
who might possibly intend that trial to be the last I should have had?

Would to Heaven, that I had stood it, however! then if I had afterwards
done, what now I have been prevailed upon, or perhaps foolishly
frightened to do, I should not have been stung so much by inward
reproach as now I am: and this would have been a great evil avoided.

You know, my dear, that your Clarissa's mind was ever above justifying
her own failings by those of others. God forgive those of my friends
who have acted cruelly by me! But their faults are their own, and
not excuses for mine. And mine began early: for I ought not to have
corresponded with him.

O the vile encroacher! how my indignation, at times, rises at him! thus
to lead a young creature (too much indeed relying upon her own strength)
from evil to evil!--This last evil, although the remote, yet sure
consequence of my first--my prohibited correspondence! by a father early
prohibited.

How much more properly had I acted, with regard to that correspondence,
had I, once for all, when he was forbidden to visit me, and I to receive
his visits, pleaded the authority by which I ought to have been bound,
and denied to write to him!--But I thought I could proceed, or stop, as
I pleased. I supposed it concerned me, more than any other, to be
the arbitress of the quarrels of unruly spirits.--And now I find my
presumption punished--punished, as other sins frequently are, by itself!

As to this last rashness; now, that it is too late, I plainly see how
I ought to have conducted myself. As he knew I had but one way of
transmitting