The man cried, Madam, Madam, twice, and looked like a fool. But away I went.

I had but just got into my own apartment and began to think of sending Hannah to beg an audience of my mamma (the more encouraged by her condescending goodness at breakfast), when Shorey, her woman, brought me her commands to attend her in her closet.

My papa, Hannah told me, had just gone out of it with a positive, angry countenance. Then I as much dreaded the audience as I had wished for it before.

I went down, however; but, apprehending the subject, approached her trembling and my heart in visible palpitations.

She saw my concern. Holding out her kind arms as she sat, Come kiss me, my dear, said she with a smile like a sunbeam breaking through the cloud that overshadowed her naturally benign aspect. Why flutters my jewel so?

This preparative sweetness, with her goodness just before, confirmed my apprehensions. My mamma saw the bitter pill wanted gilding.

Oh my mamma! was all I could say, and I clasped my arms round her neck and my face sunk into her bosom.

My child! my child! restrain, said she, your powers of moving! I dare not else trust myself with you.

Lift up your sweet face, my best child, my own Clarissa Harlowe. Why these sobs? Is an apprehended duty so affecting a thing that before I can speak—But I am glad, my love, you can guess at what I have to say to you. I am spared the pains of breaking to you what was a task upon me reluctantly enough undertaken to break to you.

And drawing her chair still nearer to mine, she put her arms round my neck and my glowing cheek, wet with my tears, close to her own. Let me talk to you, my child, since silence is your choice; hearken to me, and be silent.

You know, my dear, what I every day forgo and undergo, for the sake of peace. Your papa is a very good man and means well; but he will not be controlled, nor yet persuaded. You have seemed to pity me sometimes, that I am obliged to give up every point. Poor man! his reputation the less for it; mine the greater; yet would I not have this credit, if I could help it, at so dear a rate to him and to myself. You are a dutiful, a prudent and a wise child, she was pleased to say (in hope, no doubt, to make me so); you would not add, I am sure, to my trouble. You would not wilfully break that peace which costs your mamma so much to preserve. Obedience is better than sacrifice.

You have had your own way six or seven times. We want to secure you against a man so vile [Lovelace]. Tell me; I have a right to know; whether you prefer this man to all others? Yet God forbid that I should know you do! for such a declaration would make us all miserable. Yet, tell me, are your affections engaged to this man?

I knew what the inference would be, if I had said they were not.

You hesitate; you answer me not; you cannot answer me. Never more will I look upon you with an eye of favour.

Oh madam, madam! Kill me not with your displeasure. I would not, I need not, hesitate one moment, did I not dread the inference if I answer you as you wish. Yet be that inference what it will, your threatened displeasure will make me speak. And I declare to you that I know not my own heart if it be not absolutely free.

Well then, Clary (passing over the force of my plea), if your heart be free—

Oh my beloved mamma, let the usual generosity of your dear heart operate in my favour. Urge not upon me the inference that made me hesitate.

Am I to be questioned and argued with? You know this won’t do somewhere else. You know it won’t. What reason then, ungenerous girl, can you have for arguing with me thus, but because you think from my indulgence to you, you may?

Dearest madam, forgive me. It was always my pride and my pleasure to obey you. But look upon that man—see but the disagreeableness of his person.

Condition thus with your papa. Will he bear, do you think, to be thus dialogued with? And will you give up nothing? Have you not refused as many as have been offered to you?

And saying this, she arose and went from me.

I will deposit thus far; and as I know you will not think me too minute in my relation of particulars so very interesting to one you honour with your love, proceed in the same way. As matters stand, I don’t care to have papers so freely written about me.

Pray let Robert call every day, if you can spare him, whether I have anything ready or not.

What a generosity in you to write as frequently from friendship as I am forced to do from misfortune! The letters being taken away will be an assurance that you have them. As I shall write and deposit as I have opportunity, the formality of super- and sub-scription will be excused.