Clarissa Harlowe; or the history of a young lady — Volume 3

See Letter XIX. of this volume.

37

See Letter VI. of this volume.

38

See Letter VI. of this volume.

39

See Vol.I. Letters II. and III.

40

See Letter VIII. of this volume.

41

The reader will see how Miss Howe accounts for this, in Letter XXXV.

42

Luke xv. 7.  The parable is concerning the Ninety-nine Sheep, not the Prodigal Son, as Mr. Lovelace erroneously imagines.

43

See Letter XXIV. of this volume.

44

The reader, perhaps, need not be reminded that he had taken care from the first (see Vol. I. Letter XXXI.) to deprive her of any protection from Mrs. Howe. See in his next letter, a repeated account of the same artifices, and his exultations upon his inventions to impose upon the two such watchful ladies as Clarissa and Miss Howe.

45

See Vol. II. Letter XXXVII.

46

The reader is referred to Mr. Lovelace's next letter, for his motives in making the several proposals of which the Lady is willing to think so well.

47

Antonio Perez was first minister of Philip II. king of Spain, by whose command he caused Don Juan de Escovedo to be assassinated: which brought on his own ruin, through the perfidy of his viler master.—Gedde's Tracts.

48

See Letters XLVII., XLVIII. of this volume.

49

See Letter XXXI. of this volume.

50

See Vol.II. Letters XV. and XVI.

51

The contents of the Letter referred to are given in Letter XXIV. of this volume.

52

The reader who has seen his account, which Miss Howe could not have seen, when she wrote thus, will observe that it was not possible for a person of her true delicacy of mind to act otherwise than she did, to a man so cruelly and so insolently artful.

53

See Letter XLV. of this volume.

54

See Vol.II. Letter XLVII.

55

See Letter XVIII. of this volume.

56

This letter was from Miss Arabella Harlowe.  See Let. LV.

57

Notwithstanding what Mrs. Hervey here says, it will be hereafter seen that this severe letter was written in private concert with the implacable Arabella.

58

Mr. Lovelace, in his next Letter, tells his friend how extremely ill the Lady was, recovering from fits to fall into stronger fits, and nobody expecting her life. She had not, he says, acquainted Miss Howe how very ill she was.—In the next Letter, she tells Miss Howe, that her motives for suspending were not merely ceremonious ones.

59

See Letter XXXV. and Letter XXXVI. of this volume.

60

See Letter XXXVI. of this volume.

61