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THE HISTORY
OF
Clarissa Harlowe.
VOL. III.
LETTER I.
Mr. Lovelace, To John Belford, Esq;
St. Albans, Monday Night.
I snatch a few moments while my Beloved is retired [as I hope, to rest] to perform my promise. No pursuit---Nor have I apprehensions of any; tho' I must make my charmer dread that there will be one. And now, let me tell thee, that never was joy so complete as mine!---But let me enquire---Is not the angel flown away?
O no! She is the next apartment!---Securely mine!---Mine for ever!
O ecstasy!---My Heart will burst my breast,
To leap into her bosom!---
I knew, that the whole stupid family were in a combination to do my business for me. I told thee
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that they were all working for me, like so many underground moles; and still more blind than the moles are said to be, unknowing that they did so. I myself, the director of their principal motions; which falling in with the malice of their little hearts, they took to be all their own.
But did I say, my joy was perfect?---O no!---It receives some abatement from my disgusted Pride. For how can I endure to think, that I owe more to her relations persecutions, than to her favour for me?---Or even, as far as I know, to her preference of me to another man?
But let me not indulge this thought. Were I to do so, it might cost my charmer dear. Let me rejoice, that she has passed the Rubicon: That she cannot return: That, as I have ordered it, the flight will appear to the Implacables to be altogether with her own consent: And that if I doubt her Love, I can put her to trials as mortifying to her Niceness, as glorious to my Pride.---For, let me tell thee, dearly as I love her, if I thought there was but the shadow of a doubt in her mind, whether she preferred me to any man living, I would shew her no mercy.
Tuesday, Day-dawn.
But, on the wings of Love, I fly to my charmer, who perhaps by this time is rising to encourage the tardy dawn. I have not slept a wink of the hour and half I lay down to invite sleep. It seems to me, that I am not so much Body, as to require such vulgar renovation.
But why, as in the chariot, as in the inn, at alighting, all heart-bursting grief, my dearest creature? So persecuted as thou wert persecuted!---So much in danger of the most abhorred compulsion!---Yet grief so unsuspectably sincere for an escape so critical!---Take care---Take care, O beloved of my Soul! for jealous is the heart in which Love has erected a temple to thee.
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Yet, it must be allowed, that such a sudden transition must affect her; must ice her over. When a little more used to her new situation; when her hurries are at an end; when she sees how religiously I shall observe all her INJUNCTIONS; she will undoubtedly have the gratitude to distinguish between the confinement she has escaped from, and the liberty she has reason to rejoice in.
She comes! She comes!---And the Sun is just rising to attend her!---Adieu!---Be half as happy as I am (for all diffidences, like night-fogs before the Sun, disperse at her approach) and, next myself, thou wilt be the happiest man in the world.