LETTER XLVIII.
Miss Howe, To Miss Clarissa Harlowe.
Tuesday, Nine o'Clock.
I write, because you enjoin me to do so. Love you still!---How can I help it, if I would? You may believe how I stand aghast, your Letter communicating the first news---Good God of Heaven and Earth!---But what shall I say?---I am all impatience for particulars.
Lord have mercy upon me!---But can it be?
My Mother will indeed be astonished!---How can I tell it her!---It was but last night (upon some jealousies put into her head by your foolish Uncle) that I assured her, and this upon the strength of your own assurances, that neither man nor devil would be able to induce you to take a step that was in the least derogatory to the most punctilious honour.
But, once more, Can it be? What woman, at this rate!---But, God preserve you!
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Let nothing escape you in your Letters. Direct them for me however to Mrs. Knollys's, till further notice.
Observe, my dear, that I don't blame You by all this---Your Relations only are in fault!---Yet how you came to change your mind is the surprising thing.
How to break it to my Mother, I know not. Yet, if she hear it first from any other, and find I knew it before, she will believe it to be by my connivance!---Yet, as I hope to live, I know not how to break it to her.
But this is teazing you.---I am sure, without intention.
Let me now repeat my former advice---If you are not married by this time, be sure delay not the Ceremony. Since things are as they are, I wish it were thought that you were privately married before you went away. If these men plead AUTHORITY to our pain, when we are theirs---why should we not, in such a case as this, make some good out of the hated word, for our reputation, when we are induced to violate a more natural one?
Your Brother and Sister [That vexes me almost as much as any-thing!] have now their ends. Now, I suppose, will go forward alterations of Wills, and such-like spiteful doings.
Miss Lloyd and Miss Biddulph this moment send up their names. They are out of breath, Kitty says, to speak to me---Easy to guess their errand!---I must see my Mother, before I see them. I have no way but to shew her your Letter, to clear myself. I shall not be able to say a word, till she has run herself out of her first breath.---Forgive me, my dear---Surprize makes me write thus. If your messenger did not wait, and were not those young Ladies below, I would write it over again, for fear of afflicting you.
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I send what you write for. If there be any-thing else you want that is in my power, command without reserve
Your ever-affectionate
Anna Howe.