LETTER II.

MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE, TO MISS HOWE.
TUESDAY NIGHT.


I think myself obliged to thank you, my dear Miss Howe, for your
condescension, in taking notice of a creature who has occasioned you so
much scandal.

I am grieved on this account, as much, I verily think, as for the evil
itself.

Tell me--but yet I am afraid to know--what your mother said.

I long, and yet I dread, to be told, what the young ladies my companions,
now never more perhaps to be so, say of me.

They cannot, however, say worse of me than I will of myself. Self
accusation shall flow in every line of my narrative where I think I am
justly censurable. If any thing can arise from the account I am going to
give you, for extenuation of my fault (for that is all a person can hope
for, who cannot excuse herself) I know I may expect it from your
friendship, though not from the charity of any other: since by this time
I doubt not every mouth is opened against me; and all that know Clarissa
Harlowe condemn the fugitive daughter.

After I had deposited my letter to you, written down to the last hour, as
I may say, I returned to the ivy summer-house; first taking back my
letter from the loose bricks: and there I endeavoured, as coolly as my