t Hervey's or at my uncle Antony's; wishing for my cousin Morden's
arrival, who might have accommodated all.

I intended, indeed, to have stood it: And, if I had, how know I by whose
name I might now have been called? For how should I have resisted a
condescending, a kneeling father, had he been able to have kept his
temper with me?

Yet my aunt say he would have relented, if I had not. Perhaps he would
have been moved by my humility, before he could have shown such undue
condescension. Such temper as he would have received me with might have
been improved upon in my favour. And that he had designed ultimately to
relent, how it clears my friends (at least to themselves) and condemns
me! O why were my aunt's hints (I remember them now) so very dark?--Yet
I intended to have returned after the interview; and then perhaps
she would have explained herself.--O this artful, this designing
Lovelace--yet I must repeat, that most ought I to blame myself for
meeting him.

But far, far, be banished from me fruitless recrimination! Far banished,
because fruitless! Let me wrap myself about in the mantle of my own
integrity, and take comfort in my unfaulty intention! Since it is now
too late to look back, let me collect all my fortitude, and endeavour to
stand those shafts of angry Providence, which it will not permit me to
shun! That, whatever the trials may be which I am destined to undergo, I
may not behave unworthily in them, and may come out amended by them.

Join with me in this prayer, my beloved friend; for your own honour's
sake, as well as for love's sake, join with me in it; lest a deviation
on my side should, with the censorious, cast a shade upon a friendship
which has no levity in it; and the basis of which is improvement, as
well in the greater as lesser duties.

CL. HARLOWE.

LETTER LIV

MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE, TO MISS HOWE SATURDAY AFTERNOON, APRIL 22.

O my best, my only friend! Now indeed is my heart broken! It has
received a blow it never will recover. Think not of corresponding with
a wretch who now seems absolutely devoted. How can it be otherwise, if
a parent's curses have the weight I always attributed to them, and have
heard so many instances in confirmation of that weight!--Yes, my dear
Miss Howe, superadded to all my afflictions, I have the consequences
of a father's curse to struggle with! How shall I support this
reflection!--My past and my present situation so much authorizing my
apprehen