LETTER VI.
ToMiss Arabella Harlowe.
[Inclosed to Miss Howe in the preceding.]
St. Albans, Apr. 11.
My dear Sister,
I have, I confess, been guilty of an action which carries with it a rash and undutiful appearance. And I should have thought it an inexcusable one, had I been used with less severity than I have been of late; and had I not had too great reason to apprehend, that I was to be made a sacrifice to a man I could not bear to think of. But what is done, is done---Perhaps I could wish it had not; and that I had trusted to the relenting of my dear and honoured parents.---Yet this from no other motives, but those of duty to them.---To whom I am ready to return (if I may not be permitted to retire to The Grove) on conditions which I before offered to comply with.
Nor shall I be in any sort of dependence upon the person by whose means I have taken this truly reluctant step, inconsistent with any reasonable engagement I
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shall enter into, if I am not farther precipitated. Let me not have it to say, Now at this important crisis! that I have a Sister, but not a Friend in that Sister. My Reputation dearer to me than life (whatever you may imagine from the step I have taken) is suffering. A little lenity will, even yet, in a great measure, restore it, and make that pass for a temporary misunderstanding only, which otherwise will be a stain as durable as life, upon a creature who has already been treated with great unkindness, to use no harsher a word.
For your own sake therefore, for my Brother's sake, by whom (I must say) I have been thus precipitated, and for all the family's sake, aggravate not my fault, if, on recollecting every-thing, you think it one; nor by widening the unhappy difference, expose a Sister for ever---Prays
Your affectionate
Cl. Harlowe.
I shall take it for a very great favour, to have my cloaths directly sent me, together with Fifty guineas, which you will find in my Escritoire (of which I inclose the key); as also the Divinity and Miscellany classes of my little Library; and, if it be thought fit, my Jewels---Directed for me, To be left, till called for, at Mr. Osgood's, near Soho-Square.