***

>>> I am excessively concerned that I should be pre-
     vailed upon, between your over-niceness, on one
     hand, and my mother’s positiveness, on the other, to
     be satisfied without knowing how to direct to you
     at your lodgings.  I think too, that the proposal
     that I should be put off to a third-hand knowledge,
     or rather veiled in a first-hand ignorance, came from
     him, and that it was only acquiesced in by you, as
     it was by me,* upon needless and weak considera-
     tions; because, truly, I might have it to say, if
     challenged, that I knew not where to send to you! 
     I am ashamed of myself!—­Had this been at first
     excusable, it could not be a good reason for going
     on in the folly, when you had no liking to the
>>> house, and when he began to play tricks, and delay
     with you.—­What!  I was to mistrust myself, was
     I?  I was to allow it to be thought, that I could
>>> not keep my own secret?—­But the house to be
>>> taken at this time, and at that time, led us both on
>>> —­like fools, like tame fools, in a string.  Upon my
     life, my dear, this man is a vile, a contemptible
     villain—­I must speak out!—­How has he laughed
     in his sleeve at us both, I warrant, for I can’t tell
     how long!

* See Vol.  III.  Letter LVI. par. 12. and Letter LVIII. par. 12.—­Where the reader will observe, that the proposal came from herself; which, as it was also mentioned by Mr. Lovelace, (towards the end of Letter I. in Vol.  IV.) she may be presumed to have forgotten.  So that Clarissa had a double inducement for acquiescing with the proposed method of carrying on the correspondence between Miss Howe and herself by Wilson’s conveyance, and by the name of Laetitia Beaumont.

         And yet who could have thought that a man of
>>> fortune, and some reputation, [this Doleman, I
     mean—­not your wretch, to be sure!] formerly a
     rake, indeed, [I inquired after him long ago; and
     so was the easier satisfied;] but married to a
     woman of family—­having had a palsy-blow—­and,
>>> one would think, a penitent, should recommend
     such a house [why, my dear, he could not inquire
     of it, but must find it to be bad] to such a man as
     Lovelace, to bring his future, nay, his then supposed,
     bride to?

***

>>> I write, perhaps, with too much violence, to be
     clear, but I cannot help it.  Yet I lay down my
     pen, and take it up every ten minutes, in order to
     write with some temper—­my mother too, in and
     out—­What need I, (she asks me,) lock myself in,
     if I am only reading past correspondencies?  For
>>> that is my pretence, when she comes poking in with
     her face sharpened to an edge, as I may say, by a
     curiosity that gives her more pain than pleasure.—­
>>> The Lord forgive me; but I believe I shall huff
     her next time she comes in.