friend-
ship--For, is not your honour my honour? And
is not your friendship the pride of my life?

May Heaven preserve you, my dearest creature,
in honour and safety, is the prayer, the hourly
prayer, of

Your ever-faithful and affectionate
ANNA HOWE.

THURSDAY MORN. 5. I have
written all night

***

TO MISS HOWE

MY DEAREST CREATURE,

How you have shocked, confounded, surprised, astonished me, by your
dreadful communication!--My heart is too weak to bear up against such a
stroke as this!--When all hope was with me! When my prospects were so
much mended!--But can there be such villany in men, as in this vile
principal, and equally vile agent!

I am really ill--very ill--grief and surprise, and, now I will say,
despair, have overcome me!--All, all, you have laid down as conjecture,
appears to me now to be more than conjecture!

O that your mother would have the goodness to permit me the presence of
the only comforter that my afflicted, my half-broken heart, could be
raised by. But I charge you, think not of coming up without her
indulgent permission. I am too ill at present, my dear, to think of
combating with this dreadful man; and of flying from this horrid house!--
My bad writing will show you this.--But my illness will be my present
security, should he indeed have meditated villany.--Forgive, O forgive
me, my dearest friend, the trouble I have given you!--All must soon--But
why add I grief to grief, and trouble to trouble?--But I charge you, my
beloved creature, not to think of coming up without your mother's love,
to the truly desolate and broken-spirited

CLARISSA HARLOWE.

***

Well, Jack!--And what thinkest thou of this last letter? Miss Howe
values not either fame or censure; and thinkest thou, that this letter
will not bring the little fury up, though she could procure no other
conveyance than her higgler's panniers, one for herself, the other for
her maid? She knows whither to come now. Many a little villain have I
punished for knowing more than I would have her know, and that by adding
to her knowledge and experience. What thinkest thou, Belford, if, by
getting hither this virago, and giving cause for a lamentable letter from
her to the fair fugitive, I should be able to recover her? Would she not
visit that friend in her distress, thinkest thou, whose intended visit to
her in her's brought her into the condition from which she herself ha