d I am; and I will. You, Madam, shall see all the letters that
have passed between us. You shall see I have given him no encouragement
independent of my duty. And when you have seen them, you will be
better able to direct me how, on the condition I have offered, to break
entirely with him.

I take you at your word, Clarissa--Give me his letters; and the copies
of yours.

I am sure, Madam, you will keep the knowledge that I write, and what I
write--

No conditions with your mother--surely my prudence may be trusted to.

I begged her pardon; and besought her to take the key of the private
drawer in my escritoire, where they lay, that she herself might see that
I had no reserves to my mother.

She did; and took all his letters, and the copies of
mine.--Unconditioned with, she was pleased to say, they shall be yours
again, unseen by any body else.

I thanked her; and she withdrew to read them; saying, she would return
them, when she had.

***

You, my dear, have seen all the letters that passed between Mr. Lovelace
and me, till my last return from you. You have acknowledged, that he has
nothing to boast of from them. Three others I have received since, by
the private conveyance I told you of: the last I have not yet answered.

In these three, as in those you have seen, after having besought my
favour, and, in the most earnest manner, professed the ardour of his
passion for me; and set forth the indignities done him; the defiances
my brother throws out against him in all companies; the menaces, and
hostile appearance of my uncles wherever they go; and the methods they
take to defame him; he declares, 'That neither his own honour, nor
the honour of his family, (involved as that is in the undistinguishing
reflection cast upon him for an unhappy affair which he would have
shunned, but could not) permit him to bear these confirmed indignities:
that as my inclinations, if not favourable to him, cannot be, nor are,
to such a man as the newly-introduced Solmes, he is interested the more
to resent my brother's behaviour; who to every body avows his rancour
and malice; and glories in the probability he has, through the address
of this Solmes, of mortifying me, and avenging himself on him: that
it is impossible he should not think himself concerned to frustrate a
measure so directly levelled at him, had he not a still higher motive
for hoping to frustrate it: that I must forgive him, if he enter into
conference with So