Volume II Part 11 (1/2)

What would you have had me say, my dear?--I won't tell you what I did say: But had I not said what I did, who would have believed me?

Besides, I know you love him!--Excuse me, my dear: Yet, if you deny it, what do you but reflect upon yourself, as if you thought you ought not to allow yourself in what you cannot help doing?

Indeed, Madam, said I, the man is worthy of any woman's love [if, again, I could say]--But her parents--

Her parents, Nancy--[You know, my dear, how my mother, who accuses her daughter of quickness, is evermore interrupting one!]

May take wrong measures, said I--

Cannot do wrong--they have reason, I'll warrant, said she--

By which they may provoke a young woman, said I, to do rash things, which otherwise she would not do.

But, if it be a rash thing, [returned she,] should she do it? A prudent daughter will not wilfully err, because her parents err, if they were to err: if she do, the world which blames the parents, will not acquit the child. All that can be said, in extenuation of a daughter's error in this case, arises from a kind consideration, which Miss Clary's letter to Lady Drayton pleads for, to be paid to her daughter's youth and inexperience. And will such an admirable young person as Miss Clarissa Harlowe, whose prudence, as we see, qualifies her to be an advisor of persons much older than herself, take shelter under so poor a covert?

Let her know, Nancy, out of hand, what I say; and I charge you to represent farther to her, That let he dislike one man and approve of another ever so much, it will be expected of a young lady of her unbounded generosity and greatness of mind, that she should deny herself when she can oblige all her family by so doing--no less than ten or a dozen perhaps the nearest and dearest to her of all the persons in the world, an indulgent father and mother at the head of them. It may be fancy only on her side; but parents look deeper: And will not Miss Clarissa Harlowe give up her fancy to her parents' judgment?

I said a great deal upon this judgment subject: all that you could wish I should say; and all that your extraordinary case allowed me to say.

And my mother was so sensible of the force of it, that she charged me not to write to you any part of my answer to what she said; but only what she herself had advanced; lest, in so critical a case, it should induce you to take measures which might give us both reason (me for giving it, you for following it) to repent it as long as we lived.

And thus, my dear, have I set my mother's arguments before you. And the rather, as I cannot myself tell what to advise you to do--you know best your own heart; and what that will let you do.

Robin undertakes to deposit this very early, that you may have an opportunity to receive it by your first morning airing.

Heaven guide and direct you for the best, is the incessant prayer of

Your ever affectionate ANNA HOWE.

LETTER XV

MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE, TO MISS HOWE SUNDAY AFTERNOON

I am in great apprehension. Yet cannot help repeating my humble thanks to your mother and you for your last favour. I hope her kind end is answered by the contents of my last. Yet I must not think it enough to acknowledge her goodness to me, with a pencil only, on the cover of a letter sealed up. A few lines give me leave to write with regard to my anonymous letter to Lady Drayton. If I did not at that time tell you, as I believe I did, that my excellent Mrs. Norton gave me her a.s.sistance in that letter, I now acknowledge that she did.

Pray let your mother know this, for two reasons: one, that I may not be thought to arrogate to myself a discretion which does not belong to me; the other, that I may not suffer by the severe, but just inference she was pleased to draw; doubling my faults upon me, if I myself should act unworthy of the advice I was supposed to give.

Before I come to what most nearly affects us all, I must chide you once more, for the severe, the very severe things you mention of our family, to the disparagement of their MORALS. Indeed, my dear, I wonder at you!--A slighter occasion might have pa.s.sed me, after I had written to you so often to so little purpose, on this topic. But, affecting as my own circ.u.mstances are, I cannot pa.s.s by, without animadversion, the reflection I need not repeat in words.

There is not a worthier woman in England than my mother. Nor is my father that man you sometimes make him. Excepting in one point, I know not any family which lives more up to their duty, than the princ.i.p.als of ours. A little too uncommunicative for their great circ.u.mstances--that is all.--Why, then, have they not reason to insist upon unexceptionable morals in a man whose sought-for relations.h.i.+p to them, by a marriage in their family, they have certainly a right either to allow of, or to disallow.