LETTER LX
MISS AR. HARLOWE, TO MISS CL. HARLOWE[IN ANSWER TO HER'S OF FRIDAY, JULY 21, LETTER XLV. OF THIS VOLUME.]THURSDAY, JULY 27.
O MY UNHAPPY LOST SISTER!
What a miserable hand have you made of your romantic and giddyexpedition!--I pity you at my heart.
You may well grieve and repent!--Lovelace has left you!--In what way orcircumstances you know best.
I wish your conduct had made your case more pitiable. But 'tis your ownseeking!
God help you!--For you have not a friend will look upon you!--Poor,wicked, undone creature!--Fallen, as you are, against warning, againstexpostulation, against duty!
But it signifies nothing to reproach you. I weep over you.
My poor mother!--Your rashness and folly have made her more miserablethan you can be.--Yet she has besought my father to grant your request.
My uncles joined with her: for they thought there was a little moremodesty in your letter than in the letters of your pert advocate: and myfather is pleased to give me leave to write; but only these words forhim, and no more: 'That he withdraws the curse he laid upon you, at thefirst hearing of your wicked flight, so far as it is in his power to doit; and hopes that your present punishment may be all that you will meetwith. For the rest, he will never own you, nor forgive you; and grieveshe has such a daughter in the world.'
All this, and more you have deserved from him, and from all of us: Butwhat have you done to this abandoned libertine, to deserve what you havemet with at his hands?--I fear, I fear, Sister!--But no more!--A blessedfour months' work have you made of it.
My brother is now at Edinburgh, sent thither by my father, [though heknows not this to be the motive,] that he may not meet your triumphantdeluder.
We are told he would be glad to marry you: But why, then, did he abandonyou? He had kept you till he was tired of you, no question; and it isnot likely he would wish to have you but upon the terms you have alreadywithout all doubt been his.
You ought to advise your friend Miss Howe to concern herself less in yourmatters than she does, except she could do it with more decency. She haswritten three letters to me: very insolent ones. Your favourer, poorMrs. Norton, thinks you know nothing of the pert creature's writing. Ihope you don't. But then the more impertinent the writer. But,believing the fond woman, I sat down the more readily to answer yourletter; and I write with less severity, I can tell you, than otherwise Ishould have done, if I had answered it all.
Monday last was your birth-day. Think, poor ungrateful wretch, as youare! how we all used to keep it; and you will not wonder to be told, thatwe ran away from one another that day. But God give you true penitence,if you have it not already! and it will be true, if it be equal to theshame and the sorrow you have given us all.
Your afflicted sister,ARABELLA HARLOWE.
Your cousin Morden is every day expected in England. He, as well as others of the family, when he comes to hear what a blessed piece of work you have made of it, will wish you never had had a being.