with advantage for the pleasure you had the goodness to take in your
Clarissa.

Still on her knees, let your poor penitent implore your forgiveness of
all her faults and follies; more especially of that fatal error which
threw her out of your protection.

When you know, Sir, that I have never been faulty in my will; that ever
since my calamity became irretrievable, I have been in a state of
preparation; that I have the strongest assurance that the Almighty has
accepted my unfeigned repentance; and that by this time you will (as I
humbly presume to hope,) have been the means of adding one to the number
of the blessed; you will have reason for joy rather than sorrow. Since,
had I escaped the snares by which I was entangled, I might have wanted
those exercises which I look upon now as so many mercies dispensed to
wean me betimes from a world that presented itself to me with prospects
too alluring; and in that case (too easily satisfied with the worldly
felicity) I might not have attained to that blessedness, in which now,
on your reading of this, I humbly presume, (through the divine goodness,)
I am rejoicing.

That the Almighty, in his own good time, will bring you, Sir, and my
ever-honoured mother, after a series of earthly felicities, of which my
unhappy fault be the only interruption, (and very grievous I know that
must have been,) to rejoice in the same blessed state, is the repeated
prayer of, Sir,

Your now happy daughter,
CLARISSA HARLOWE.