so far as to the other!

But why do I thus add to your distresses?--It is not, my dear Mrs.
Norton, that I have so much feeling for my own calamity that I have none
for your's: since your's is indeed an addition to my own. But you have
one consolation (a very great one) which I have not:--That your
afflictions, whether respecting your more or your less deserving child,
rise not from any fault of your own.

But what can I do for you more than pray?--Assure yourself, that in every
supplication I put up for myself, I will with equal fervour remember both
you and your son. For I am and ever will be

Your truly sympathising and dutiful
CLARISSA HARLOWE.

LETTER LXV

MISS HOWE, TO MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE
[SUPERSCRIBED FOR MRS. RACHEL CLARK, &c.]
WEDNESDAY, JULY 5.

MY DEAR CLARISSA,

I have at last heard from you from a quarter I little expected.

From my mother!

She had for some time seen me uneasy and grieving; and justly supposed it
was about you: and this morning dropt a hint, which made me conjecture
that she must have heard something of you more than I knew. And when she
found that this added to my uneasiness, she owned she had a letter in her
hands of your's, dated the 29th of June, directed for me.

You may guess, that this occasioned a little warmth, that could not be
wished for by either.

[It is surprising, my dear, mighty surprising! that knowing the
prohibition I lay under of corresponding with you, you could send a
letter for me to our own house: since it must be fifty to one that it
would fall into my mother's hands, as you find it did.]

In short, she resented that I should disobey her: I was as much concerned
that she should open and withhold from me my letters: and at last she was
pleased to compromise the matter with me by giving up the letter, and
permitting me to write to you once or twice: she to see the contents of
what I wrote. For, besides the value she has for you, she could not but
have greater curiosity to know the occasion of so sad a situation as your
melancholy letter shows you to be in.

[But I shall get her to be satisfied with hearing me read what I write;
putting in between hooks, thus [], what I intend not to read to her.]

Need I to remind you, Miss Clarissa Harlowe, of three letters I wrote to
you, to none of which I had any answer; except to the first, and that of
a few lines only, promising a letter at large, though you were well
enough, the day after you re