It would be hard not to write a few lines, so much pressed to write, to one I ever loved. Your former letter I received; yet was not at liberty to answer it. I break my word to answer you now.
Strange informations are every day received about you. The wretch you are with, we are told, is every hour triumphing and defying—Must not these informations aggravate? You know the uncontroulableness of the man. He loves his own humour better than he loves you—though so fine a creature as you are! I warned you over and over: no young lady was ever more warned!—Miss Clarissa Harlowe to do such a thing!
You might have given your friends the meeting. If you had held your aversion, it would have been complied with. As soon as I was intrusted myself with their intention to give up the point, I gave you a hint—a dark one perhaps*—but who would have thought—O Miss!—Such an artful flight!—Such cunning preparations!
But you want to clear up things—what can you clear up? Are you not gone off?—With a Lovelace too? What, my dear, would you clear up?
You did not design to go, you say. Why did you meet him then, chariot and six, horsemen, all prepared by him? O my dear, how art produces art!—Will it be believed?—If it would, what power will he be thought to have had over you!—He—Who?—Lovelace!—The vilest of libertines!—Over whom? A Clarissa!—Was your love for such a man above your reason? Above your resolution? What credit would a belief of this, if believed, bring you?—How mend the matter?—Oh! that you had stood the next morning!
I'll tell you all that was intended if you had.
It was, indeed, imagined that you would not have been able to resist your father's entreaties and commands. He was resolved to be all condescension, if anew you had not provoked him. I love my Clary Harlowe, said he, but an hour before the killing tidings were brought him; I love her as my life: I will kneel to her, if nothing else will do, to prevail upon her to oblige me.
Your father and mother (the reverse of what should have been!) would have humbled themselves to you: and if you could have denied them, and refused to sign the settlements previous to the meeting, they would have yielded, although with regret.
But it was presumed, so naturally sweet your temper, so self-denying as they thought you, that you could not have withstood them, notwithstanding all your dislike of the one man, without a greater degree of headstrong passion for the other, than you had given any of us reason to expect from you.
If you had, the meeting on Wednesday would have been a lighter trial to you. You would have been presented to all your assembled friends, with a short speech only, 'That this was the young creature, till very lately faultless, condescending, and obliging; now having cause to glory in a triumph over the wills of father, mother, uncles, the most indulgent; over family-interests, family-views; and preferring her own will to every body's! and this for a transitory preference to person only; there being no comparison between the men in their morals.'