I long for your next letter. Continue to be as particular as possible. I can think of no other subject but what relates to you and to your affairs: for I am, and ever will be, most affectionately,
Your own, ANNA HOWE.
LETTER XVI
MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE, TO MISS HOWE [HER PRECEDING NOT AT THAT TIME RECEIVED.] FRIDAY, MARCH 3.
O my dear friend, I have had a sad conflict! Trial upon trial; conference upon conference!—But what law, what ceremony, can give a man a right to a heart which abhors him more than it does any living creature?
I hope my mother will be able to prevail for me.—But I will recount it all, though I sit up the whole night to do it; for I have a vast deal to write, and will be as minute as you wish me to be.
I concluded my last in a fright. It was occasioned by a conversation that passed between my mother and my aunt, part of which Hannah overheard. I need not give you the particulars; since what I have to relate to you from different conversations that have passed between my mother and me, in the space of a very few hours, will include them all. I will begin then.
I went down this morning when breakfast was ready with a very uneasy heart, from what Hannah had informed me of yesterday afternoon; wishing for an opportunity, however, to appeal to my mother, in hopes to engage her interest in my behalf, and purposing to try to find one when she retired to her own apartment after breakfast: but, unluckily, there was the odious Solmes, sitting asquat between my mother and sister, with so much assurance in his looks!—But you know, my dear, that those we love not, cannot do any thing to please us.
Had the wretch kept his seat, it might have been well enough: but the bend and broad-shouldered creature must needs rise, and stalk towards a chair, which was just by that which was set for me.