Clarissa, Volume 6 - The History Of A Young Lady

Clarissa, Volume 6 − The History Of A Young Lady 134
young lady, but for two or three days, permit me to attend you, although my son's illness should increase, and
compel me to come down again at the end of those two or three days.−− I repeat my request, likewise, that
you will command from me the little sum remaining in the hands of your bounty to your Poor, as well as that
dispensed to
Your ever−affectionate and faithful servant, JUDITH NORTON.
LETTER LVII
MISS CL. HARLOWE, TO LADY BETTY LAWRANCE THURSDAY, JUNE 29.
MADAM,
I hope you'll excuse the freedom of this address, from one who has not the honour to be personally known to
you, although you must have heard much of Clarissa Harlowe. It is only to beg the favour of a line from your
Ladyship's hand, (by the next post, if convenient,) in answer to the following questions:
1. Whether you wrote a letter, dated, as I have a memorandum, Wedn. June 7, congratulating your nephew
Lovelace on his supposed nuptials, as reported to you by Mr. Spurrier, your Ladyship's steward, as from one
Captain Tomlinson:−−and in it reproaching Mr. Lovelace, as guilty of slight, &c. in not having acquainted
your Ladyship and the family with his marriage?
2. Whether your ladyship wrote to Miss Montague to meet you at Reading, in order to attend you to your
cousin Leeson's, in Albemarle−street; on your being obliged to be in town on your old chancery affair, I
remember are the words? and whether you bespoke your nephew's attendance there on Sunday night the 11th?
3. Whether your Ladyship and Miss Montague did come to town at that time; and whether you went to
Hampstead, on Monday, in a hired coach and four, your own being repairing, and took from thence to town
with the young creature whom you visited there?
Your Ladyship will probably guess, that the questions are not asked for reasons favourable to your nephew
Lovelace. But be the answer what it will, it can do him no hurt, nor me any good; only that I think I owe it to
my former hopes, (however deceived in them,) and even to charity, that a person, of whom I was once willing
to think better, should not prove so egregiously abandoned, as to be wanting, in every instance, to that veracity
which is indispensable in the character of a gentleman.
Be pleased, Madam, to direct to me, (keeping the direction a secret for the present,) to be left at the
Belle−Savage, on Ludgate hill, till called for. I am
Your Ladyship's most humble servant, CLARISSA HARLOWE.
LETTER LVIII
LADY BETTY LAWRANCE, TO MISS CL. HARLOWE SATURDAY, JULY 1.
DEAR MADAM,
I find that all is not as it should be between you and my nephew Lovelace. It will very much afflict me, and all
his friends, if he has been guilty of any designed baseness to a lady of your character and merit.
We have been long in expectation of an opportunity to congratulate you and ourselves upon an event most
earnestly wished for by us all; since our hopes of him are built upon the power you have over him: for if ever