doing her justice. Resolves to try her to the utmost. The honour of the
whole sex concerned in the issue of her trial. Matrimony, he sees, is in
his power, now she is.

LETTER XIX. Miss Howe to Clarissa.--Will not obey her mother in her
prohibition of their correspondence: and why. Is charmed with her
spirit.

LETTER XX. Clarissa to Miss Howe.--Knows not what she can do with
Lovelace. He may thank himself for the trouble he has had on her
account. Did she ever, she asks, make him any promises? Did she ever
receive him as a lover?

LETTER XXI. XXII. From the same.--She calls upon Lovelace to give her a
faithful account of the noise and voices she heard at the garden-door,
which frightened her away with him. His confession, and daring hints in
relation to Solmes, and her brother, and Betty Barnes. She is terrified.

LETTER XXIII. Lovelace to Belford.--Rejoices in the stupidity of the
Harlowes. Exults in his capacity for mischief. The condescensions
to which he intends to bring the lady. Libertine observations to the
disadvantage of women; which may serve as cautions to the sex.

LETTER XXIV. Clarissa to Miss Howe.--A conversation with Mr. Lovelace
wholly agreeable. His promises of reformation. She remembers, to his
advantage, his generosity to his Rosebud and his tenants. Writes to her
aunt Hervey.

LETTER XXV. XXVI. Lovelace to Belford.--His acknowledged vanity.
Accounts for his plausible behaviour, and specious promises and
proposals. Apprehensive of the correspondence between Miss Howe and
Clarissa. Loves to plague him with out-of-the-way words and phrases.

LETTER XXVII. Miss Howe to Clarissa.--How to judge of Lovelace's
suspicious proposals and promises. Hickman devoted to their service. Yet
she treats him with ridicule.

LETTER XXVIII. Clarissa to Miss Howe.--Lovelace complains, she hears, to
Mrs. Greme, of her adhering to her injunctions. What means he by it, she
asks, yet forego such opportunities as he had? She is punished for her
vanity in hoping to be an example. Blames Miss Howe for her behaviour to
Hickman.

LETTER XXIX. From the same.--Warm dialogues with Lovelace. She is
displeased with him for his affectedly-bashful hints of matrimony.
Mutual recriminations. He looks upon her as his, she says, by a strange
sort of obligation, for having run away with her against her will. Yet
but touches on the edges of matrimony neither. She is sick of herself.

LETTER XXX. From the same.--Mr. Lovelace a per