Of his setting out for M. Hall:
Of his repeated letters to induce her to meet him at the altar, on her uncle’s anniversary:
Of her determined silence to them all:
Of her second escape, effected, as she says, contrary to her own expectation: the attempt being at first but the intended prelude to a more promising one, which she had formed in her mind:
And of other particulars; which being to be found in Mr. Lovelace’s letters preceding, and the letter of his friend Belford, are omitted. She then proceeds:]
The very hour that I found myself in a place of safety, I took pen to write to you. When I began, I designed only to write six or eight lines, to inquire after your health: for, having heard nothing from you, I feared indeed, that you had been, and still were, too ill to write. But no sooner did my pen begin to blot the paper, but my sad heart hurried it into length. The apprehensions I had lain under, that I should not be able to get away; the fatigue I had in effecting my escape: the difficulty of procuring a lodging for myself; having disliked the people of two houses, and those of a third disliking me; for you must think I made a frighted appearance—these, together with the recollection of what I had suffered from him, and my farther apprehensions of my insecurity, and my desolate circumstances, had so disordered me, that I remember I rambled strangely in that letter.
In short, I thought it, on re-perusal, a half-distracted one: but I then despaired, (were I to begin again,) of writing better: so I let it go: and can have no excuse for directing it as I did, if the cause of the incoherence in it will not furnish me with a very pitiable one.
The letter I received from your mother was a dreadful blow to me. But nevertheless it had the good effect upon me (labouring, as I did just then, under a violent fit of vapourish despondency, and almost yielding to it) which profuse bleeding and blisterings have in paralytic or apoplectical strokes; reviving my attention, and restoring me to spirits to combat the evils I was surrounded by—sluicing off, and diverting into a new channel, (if I may be allowed another metaphor,) the overcharging woes which threatened once more to overwhelm my intellects.
But yet I most sincerely lamented, (and still lament,) in your mother’s words, That I cannot be unhappy by myself: and was grieved, not only for the trouble I had given you before; but for the new one I had brought upon you by my inattention.
[She then gives the substance of the letters she wrote to Mrs. Norton, to Lady Betty Lawrance, and to Mrs. Hodges; as also of their answers; whereby she detected all Mr. Lovelace’s impostures. She proceeds as follows:]