n that they bring upon ours: and when once entered,
one is obliged to go on with them, treading, with tender feet, upon
thorns, and sharper thorns, to the end of a painful journey.

What to do I know not. The more I think, the more I am embarrassed!--And
the stronger will be my doubts as the appointed time draws near.

But I will go down, and take a little turn in the garden; and deposit
this, and his letters all but the two last, which I will enclose in my
next, if I have opportunity to write another.

Mean time, my dear friend----But what can I desire you to pray
for?--Adieu, then!--Let me only say--Adieu--!

LETTER XLV

MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE, TO MISS HOWE. [IN ANSWER TO LETTER XLIII.] SUNDAY
MORNING, APRIL 9.

Do not think, my beloved friend, although you have given me in yours
of yesterday a severer instance of what, nevertheless, I must cal your
impartial love, than ever yet I received from you, that I would be
displeased with you for it. That would be to put myself into the
inconvenient situation of royalty: that is to say, out of the way of
ever being told of my faults; of ever mending them: and in the way of
making the sincerest and warmest friendship useless to me.

And then how brightly, how nobly glows in your bosom the sacred flame
of friendship; since it can make you ready to impute to the unhappy
sufferer a less degree of warmth in her own cause, than you have for
her, because of the endeavours to divest herself of self so far as to
leave others to the option which they have a right to make!--Ought I, my
dear, to blame, ought I not rather to admire you for this ardor?

But nevertheless, lest you should think that there is any foundation for
a surmise which (although it owe its rise to your friendship) would, if
there were, leave me utterly inexcusable, I must, in justice to myself,
declare, that I know not my own heart if I have any of that latent or
unowned inclination, which you would impute to any other but me. Nor
does the important alternative sit lightly on my mind. And yet I must
excuse your mother, were it but on this single consideration, that
I could not presume to reckon upon her favour, as I could upon her
daughter's, so as to make the claim of friendship upon her, to whom, as
the mother of my dearest friend, a veneration is owing, which can
hardly be compatible with that sweet familiarity which is one of the
indispensable requisites of the sacred tie by which your heart and min