[The lady next gives an account,
Of her recovery from her delirium and sleepy disorder:
Of her attempt to get away in his absence:
Of the conversations that followed, at his return, between them:
Of the guilty figure he made:
Of her resolution not to have him:
Of her several efforts to escape:
Of her treaty with Dorcas to assist her in it:
Of Dorcas’s dropping the promissory note, undoubtedly, as she says, on
purpose to betray her:
Of her triumph over all the creatures of the house, assembled to
terrify her; and perhaps to commit fresh outrages upon her:
Of his setting out for M. Hall:
Of his repeated letters to induce her to meet him at the altar, on her
uncle’s anniversary:
Of her determined silence to them all:
Of her second escape, effected, as she says, contrary to her own
expectation: the attempt being at first but the intended prelude to a
more promising one, which she had formed in her mind:
And of other particulars; which being to be found in Mr. Lovelace’s
letters preceding, and the letter of his friend Belford, are omitted.
She then proceeds:]
The very hour that I found myself in a place of safety, I took pen to
write to you. When I began, I designed only to write six or eight
lines, to inquire after your health: for, having heard nothing from
you, I feared indeed, that you had been, and still were, too ill to
write. But no sooner did my pen begin to blot the paper, but my sad
heart hurried it into length. The apprehensions I had lain under, that
I should not be able to get away; the fatigue I had in effecting my
escape: the difficulty of procuring a lodging for myself; having
disliked the people of two houses, and those of a third disliking me;
for you must think I made a frighted appearance—these, together with
the recollection of what I had suffered from him, and my farther
apprehensions of my insecurity, and my desolate circumstances, had so
disordered me, that I remember I rambled strangely in that letter.
In short, I thought it, on re-perusal, a half-distracted one: but I
then despaired, (were I to begin again,) of writing better: so I let it
go: and can have no excuse for directing it as I did, if the cause of
the incoherence in it will not furnish me with a very pitiable one.
The letter I received from your mother was a dreadful blow to me. But
nevertheless it had the good effect upon me (labouring, as I did just
then, under a violent fit of vapourish despondency, and almost yielding
to it) which profuse bleeding and blisterings have in paralytic or
apoplectical strokes; reviving my attention, and restoring me to
spirits to combat the evils I was surrounded by—sluicing off, and
diverting into a new channel, (if I may be allowed another metaphor,)
the overcharging woes which threatened once more to overwhelm my
intellects.
But yet I most sincerely lamented, (and still lament,) in your mother’s
words, That I cannot be unhappy by myself: and was grieved, not only
for the trouble I had given you before; but for the new one I had
brought upon you by my inattention.
[She then gives the substance of the letters she wrote to Mrs. Norton,
to Lady Betty Lawrance, and to Mrs. Hodges; as also of their answers;
whereby she detected all Mr. Lovelace’s impostures. She proceeds as
follows:]
I cannot, however, forbear to wonder how the vile Tomlinson could come
at the knowledge of several of the things he told me of, and which
contributed to give me confidence in him.*
* The attentive reader need not be referred back for what the Lady
nevertheless could not account for, as she knew not that Mr. Lovelace
had come at Miss Howe’s letters; particularly that in Vol. IV. Letter
XXIX. which he comments upon in Letter XLIV. of the same volume.
I doubt not that the stories of Mrs. Fretchville and her house would be
found as vile as any of the rest, were I to inquire; and had I not
enough, and too much, already against the perjured man.
How have I been led on!—What will be the end of such a false and
perjured creature! Heaven not less profaned and defied by him than
myself deceived and abused! This, however, against myself I must say,
That if what I have suffered be the natural consequence of my first
error, I never can forgive myself, although you are so partial in my
favour, as to say, that I was not censurable for what passed before my
first escape.
And now, honoured Madam, and my dearest Miss Howe, who are to sit in
judgment upon my case, permit me to lay down my pen with one request,
which, with the greatest earnestness, I make to you both: and that is,
That you will neither of you open your lips in relation to the potions
and the violences I have hinted at.—Not that I am solicitous, that my
disgrace should be hidden from the world, or that it should not be
generally known, that the man has proved a villain to me: for this, it
seems, every body but myself expected from his character. But suppose,
as his actions by me are really of a capital nature, it were insisted
upon that I should appear to prosecute him and his accomplices in a
court of justice, how do you think I could bear that?
But since my character, before the capital enormity, was lost in the
eye of the world; and that from the very hour I left my father’s house;
and since all my own hopes of worldly happiness are entirely over; let
me slide quietly into my grave; and let it be not remembered, except by
one friendly tear, and no more, dropt from your gentle eye, mine own
dear Anna Howe, on the happy day that shall shut up all my sorrows,
that there was such a creature as