not get away at my first effort, I had apprized him,
that I would not set eye upon him under a week, in order to gain myself
time for it in different ways. And were I so to have been watched as to
have made it necessary, I would, after such an instance of the connivance
of the women of the house, have run out into the street, and thrown
myself into the next house I could have entered, or claim protection from
the first person I had met--Women to desert the cause of a poor creature
of their own sex, in such a situation, what must they be!--Then, such
poor guilty sort of figures did they make in the morning after he was
gone out--so earnest to get me up stairs, and to convince me, by the
scorched window-boards, and burnt curtains and vallens, that the fire was
real--that (although I seemed to believe all they would have me believe)
I was more and more resolved to get out of their house at all adventures.

When I began, I thought to write but a few lines. But, be my subject
what it will, I know not how to conclude when I write to you. It was
always so: it is not therefore owing peculiarly to that most interesting
and unhappy situation, which you will allow, however, to engross at
present the whole mind of

Your unhappy, but ever-affectionate
CLARISSA HARLOWE.

LETTER XXII

MR. LOVELACE, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ.
FRIDAY MORNING, PAST TWO O'CLOCK.

Io Triumphe!--Io Clarissa, sing!--Once more, what a happy man thy
friend!--A silly dear novice, to be heard to tell the coachman where to
carry her!--And to go to Hampstead, of all the villages about London!--
The place where we had been together more than once!

Methinks I am sorry she managed no better!--I shall find the recovery of
her too easy a task, I fear! Had she but known how much difficulty
enhances the value of any thing with me, and had she the least notion of
obliging me by it, she would never have stopt short at Hampstead, surely.

Well, but after al this exultation, thou wilt ask, If I have already got
back my charmer?--I have not;--But knowing where she is, is almost the
same thing as having her in my power. And it delights me to think how
she will start and tremble when I first pop upon her! How she will look
with conscious guilt, that will more than wipe off my guilt of Wednesday
night, when she sees her injured lover, and acknowledged husband, from
whom, the greatest of felonies, she would have stolen herself.

But thou wilt be impatient to know