“Whether the torments of absence were softened by a clandestine correspondence, let us not enquire. Mr. and Mrs. Morland never did – they had been too kind to exact any promise; and whenever Catherine received a letter, as, at that time, happened pretty often, they always looked another way.”

Why did the correspondence have to be clandestine? Is it because Catherine and Henry were not officially engaged? Similarly, in Chapter 27, Isabella mentions that she would write to James Morland herself, but did not because she mislaid his direction and because she was afraid that he took something in her conduct amiss. Of course, this statement came after James declared that "everything is at an end between Miss Thorpe and me." Are these ladies forbidden from corresponding with these men because there are not affianced or married?