ore so, as
neither his life nor morals perhaps would stand a fair inquiry.

He smiled, and called himself my servant.--The occasion was too fair,
he said, for Miss Howe, who never spared him, to let it pass.--But, Lord
help the shallow souls of the Harlowes! Would I believe it! they were
for turning plotters upon him. They had best take care he did not pay
them in their own coin. Their hearts were better turned for such works
than their heads.

I asked him, If he valued himself upon having a head better turned than
theirs for such works, as he called them?

He drew off: and then ran into the highest professions of reverence and
affection for you.

The object so meritorious, who can doubt the reality of his professions?

Adieu, my dearest, my noble friend!--I love and admire you for the
generous conclusion of your last more than I can express. Though I began
this letter with impertinent raillery, knowing that you always loved to
indulge my mad vein; yet never was there a heart that more glowed with
friendly love, than that of

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, they all of
a sudden* became more violent, and proceeded to personal insults; which
brought on at last the unhappy rencounter between my brother and him.

* See Letter IV.

Now you must know, that from the last conversation that passed between
my aunt and me, it comes out, that this sudden vehemence on my
brother's and sister's parts, was owing to stronger reasons than to the
college-begun antipathy on his side, or to slighted love on hers;
to wit, to an apprehension that my uncles intended to follow my