family was the better.

Our other children had reason (good children as they always were) to
think themselves neglected. But they likewise were so sensible of their
sister's superiority, and of the honour she reflected upon the whole
family, that they confessed themselves eclipsed, without envying the
eclipser. Indeed, there was not any body so equal with her, in their own
opinions, as to envy what all aspired but to emulate. The dear creature,
you know, my Norton, gave an eminence to us all!

Then her acquirements. Her skill in music, her fine needle-works, her
elegance in dress; for which she was so much admired, that the
neighbouring ladies used to say, that they need not fetch fashions from
London; since whatever Miss Clarissa Harlowe wore was the best fashion,
because her choice of natural beauties set those of art far behind them.
Her genteel ease, and fine turn of person; her deep reading, and these,
joined to her open manners, and her cheerful modesty--O my good Norton,
what a sweet child was once my Clary Harlowe!

This, and more, you knew her to be: for many of her excellencies were
owing to yourself; and with the milk you gave her, you gave her what no
other nurse in the world could give her.

And do you think, my worthy woman, do you think, that the wilful lapse of
such a child is to be forgiven? Can she herself think that she deserves
not the severest punishment for the abuse of such talents as were
intrusted to her?

Her fault was a fault of premeditation, of cunning, of contrivance. She
had deceived every body's expectations. Her whole sex, as well as the
family she sprung from, is disgraced by it.

Would any body ever have believed that such a young creature as this, who
had by her advice saved even her over-lively friend from marrying a fop,
and a libertine, would herself have gone off with one of the vilest and
most notorious of libertines? A man whose character she knew; and knew
it to be worse than the character of him from whom she saved her friend;
a man against whom she was warned: one who had her brother's life in her
hands; and who constantly set our whole family at defiance.

Think for me, my good Norton; think what my unhappiness must be both as a
wife and a mother. What restless days, what sleepless nights; yet my own
rankling anguish endeavoured to be smoothed over, to soften the anguish
of fiercer spirits, and to keep them from blazing out to further
mischief! O this naught