Your own
ANNA HOWE.



LETTER XIII

MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE, TO MISS HOWE
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 1.


I now take up my pen to lay before you the inducements and motive
which my friends have to espouse so earnestly the address of this Mr.
Solmes.

In order to set this matter in a clear light, it is necessary to go a
little back, and even perhaps to mention some things which you already
know: and so you may look upon what I am going to relate, as a kind
of supplement to my letters of the 15th and 20th of January last.*


* Letters IV. and V.


In those letters, of which I have kept memorandums, I gave you an
account of my brother's and sister's antipathy to Mr. Lovelace; and
the methods they took (so far as they had then come to my knowledge)
to ruin him in the opinion of my other friends. And I told you, that
after a very cold, yet not a directly affrontive behaviour to him,