"Oh, my dear, what a sad thing is the necessity forced upon me for all this contrivance!"
II.--In London
Clarissa, after staying in lodgings at St. Albans, is persuaded by Lovelace that she will be safer from her family in London. After refusing a proposal for an immediate marriage, she therefore moves to London to lodge in a house recommended as thoroughly respectable by Lovelace, but which in reality is kept by a widow, Mrs. Sinclair, of no good repute, who is in the pay of Lovelace.
Clarissa to her friend, Miss Howe:
"April 26. At length, my dear, I am in London. My lodgings are neatly furnished, and though I like not the old gentlewoman, yet she seems obliging, and her kinswomen are genteel young people.
"I am exceedingly out of humour with Mr. Lovelace, and have great reason to be so. He began by letting me know that he had been to inquire the character of the widow. It was well enough, he said, but as she lived by letting lodgings and had other rooms in the houses which might be taken by the enemy, he knew no better way than to take them all, unless I would remove to others.
"It was easy to see he spoke the slighter of the widow to have a pretence to lodge here himself, and he frankly owned that if I chose to stay here he could not think of leaving me for six hours together. He had prepared the widow to expect that we should be here only a few days, till we could fix ourselves in a house suitable to our condition.
"'Fix ourselves in a house, Mr. Lovelace?' I said. 'Pray in what light?'
"'My dearest life, hear me with patience. I am afraid I have been too forward, for my friends in town conclude me to be married.'
"'Surely, sir, you have not presumed----'