Chapter 8
letter eight of clarissa harlowe or the history of a young lady vol i mr belford to robert lovelace esq nine friday morning i have now opportunity to write at length having necessary orders to give on the melancholy occasion joel who got to me by six in the morning and whom i dispatch instantly back with the letter i had ready from last night gives me but an indifferent account of the state of your mind i wonder not at it but time and nothing else can will make it easier to you if that is to say you have compounded with your conscience else it may be heavier every day than other tourville tells us what a way you are in i hope you will not think of coming hither the lady in her will desires you may not see her four copies are making of it it is a long one for she gives her reasons for all she wills i will write to you more particularly as soon as possibly i can Three letters are just brought by a servant in livery, directed to Miss Clarissa Harlow.
I will send copies of them to you. The contents are enough to make one mad. How would this poor lady have rejoiced to receive them? And yet, if she had, she would not have been unable to say, as she nobly did, that God would not let her depend for comfort upon any but himself.
And indeed, for some days past, she had seemed to have got above all worldly considerations. Her fervent love, even for her Miss Howe, as she acknowledged, having given way to suprema fervors end of letter eight
