LETTER XXXIII.
Miss Clarissa Harlowe, To Miss Howe.
Wedn. Morn. April 19.
I am glad, my dear friend, that you approve of my Removal to London.
The disagreement between your Mother and you gives me inexpressible affliction. I hope I think you both more unhappy than you are. But I beseech you let me know the particulars of the debate you call a very pretty one. I am well acquainted with your dialect. When I am informed of the whole, let your Mother have been ever so severe upon me, I shall be easier a great deal.---Faulty people should rather deplore the occasion they have given for anger than resent it.
If I am to be obliged to any-body in England for money, it shall be to you. Your Mother need not
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know of your kindness to me, you say---But she must know it, if it be done, and if she challenge my beloved friend upon it; for would you either falsify or prevaricate?---I wish your Mother could be made easy on this head.---Forgive me, my dear---But I know---Yet once she had a better opinion of me.---O my inconsiderate rashness!---Excuse me once more, I pray you.---Pride, when it is native, will shew itself sometimes in the midst of mortifications---But my stomach is down already.
I am unhappy that I cannot have my worthy Hannah. I am as sorry for the poor creature's illness as for my own disappointment by it. Come, my dear Miss Howe, since you press me to be beholden to you; and would think me proud if I absolutely refused your favour; pray be so good as to send her two guineas in my name.
If I have nothing for it, as you say, but Matrimony, it yields a little comfort, that his Relations do not despise the Fugitive, as persons of their rank and quality-pride might be supposed to do, for having been a Fugitive.
But O my cruel, thrice cruel Uncle! to suppose---But my heart checks my pen, and will not let it proceed, on an intimation so extremely shocking as that which he supposes!---Yet, if thus they have been persuaded, no wonder if they are irreconcileable.
This is all my hard-hearted Brother's doings!---His surmisings!---God forgive him---Prays his injured Sister!