LETTER XX MR. LOVELACE, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ.
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I am not my own mistress enough--then my mother--always up and down--and watching as if I were writing to a fellow. But I will try if I can contain myself in tolerable bounds.
The women of the house where you are--O my dear, the women of the house--but you never thought highly of them--so it cannot be very sur- >>> prising--nor would you have staid so long with them, had not the notion of removing to one of your own, made you less uneasy, and less curious about their characters, and behaviour. Yet I could now wish, that you had been less reserved among them >>> --But I tease you--In short, my dear, you are certainly in a devilish house!--Be assured that the woman is one of the vilest women--nor does she go to you by her right name--[Very true!]-- Her name is not Sinclair, nor is the street she lives in Dover-street. Did you never go out by your- self, and discharge the coach or chair, and return >>> by another coach or chair? If you did, [yet I don't remember that you ever wrote to me, that you did,] you would never have found your way to the vile house, either by the woman's name, Sin- clair, or by the street's name, mentioned by that Doleman in his letter about the lodgings.*
* Vol. III. Letters XXXVIII. and XXXIX.
The wretch might indeed have held out these false lights a little more excusably, had the house been an honest house; and had his end only been to prevent mischief from your brother. But this contrivance was antecedent, as I think, to your brother's project; so that no excuse can be made >>> for his intentions at the time--the man, whatever he may now intend, was certainly then, even then, a villain in his heart.
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>>> I am excessively concerned that I should be pre- vailed upon, between your over-niceness, on one hand, and my mother's positiveness, on the other, to be satisfied without knowing how to direct to you at your lodgings. I think too, that the proposal that I should be put off to a third-hand knowledge, or rather veiled in a first-hand ignorance, came from him, and that it was only acquiesced in by you, as it was by me,* upon needless and weak considera- tions; because, truly, I might have it to say, if challenged, that I knew not where to send to you! I am ashamed of myself!--Had this been at first excusable, it could not be a good reason for going on in the folly, when you had no liking to the >>> house, and when he began to play tricks, and delay with you.--What! I was to mistrust myself, was I? I was to allow it to be thought, that I could >>> not keep my own secret?--But the house to be >>> taken at this time, and at that time, led us both on >>> --like fools, like tame fools, in a string. Upon my life, my dear, this man is a vile, a contemptible villain--I must speak out!--How has he laughed in his sleeve at us both, I warrant, for I can't tell how long!
* See Vol. III. Letter LVI. par. 12. and Letter LVIII. par. 12.--Where the reader will observe, that the proposal came from herself; which, as it was also mentioned by Mr. Lovelace, (towards the end of Letter I. in Vol. IV.) she may be presumed to have forgotten. So that Clarissa had a double inducement for acquiescing with the proposed method of carrying on the correspondence between Miss Howe and herself by Wilson's conveyance, and by the name of Laetitia Beaumont.