"That night, when it became impossible to remain longer without
trespassing--when all the other guests had gone--I consented to
be taken home in Mr. Edgerton's carriage. Had I dreamed that Mr.
Edgerton was to have been my companion, I should have remained
all night before I would have gone with him, knowing what I knew,
and feeling the mortification which I felt. But my mother assured
me that I was to have the carriage to myself--it was she who had
procured it;--and it was not until I was seated, and beheld him
enter, that I had the least apprehension of such an intrusion.
Edward! it is with a feeling almost amounting to horror, that I am
constrained to think that my mother not only knew of his intention
to accompany me, but that she herself suggested it. This, I say
to YOU! You will find the reasons for my suspicions in the letters
which I enclose. It is a dreadful suspicion--at the expense of
one's own mother! I dare not believe in the dark malice which it
implies.--I strive to think that she meant and fancied only some
pleasant mischief.
"I shudder to declare the rest! This man, your friend--he whom you
sheltered in your bosom, and trusted beyond all others--whom you
have now taken into your house with a blindness that looks more
like a delusion of witchcraft than of friendship--this impious man,
I say, dared to wrap me in his embrace--dared to press his lips
upon mine!
"My cheek even now burns as I write, and I must lay down the pen
because of my trembling. I struggled from his grasp--I broke the
window by my side, and cried for help from the wayfarers. I cried
for you! But, you did not answer! Oh, husband! where were you? Why,
why did you expose me to such indignities?
"He was alarmed. He promised me forbearance; and, convulsed with
fright and fear, I found myself within our enclosure, I knew not
how; but before I reached the cottage I became insensible, and
knew nothing more until the pangs of labor subdued the more lasting
pains of thought and recollection.
"You resolved to leave our home--to go abroad among strangers, and
Oh! how I rejoiced at your resolution. It seemed to promise me
happiness; at least it promised me rescue and relief. I should at
all events be free from the persecution of this man. I dreaded the
consequences, either to you or to him-self, of the exposure of his
insolence. I had resolved on making it; and only hesitated, day by
day, as my mother dwelt upon the dangers which would follow. And
when you determined on removal, it seemed to me the most fortunate
providence, it promised to spare me the necessity of making this
painful revelation at all. Surely, I thought, and my mother said,
as this will put an effectual stop to his presumption, there will
be no need to narrate what is already past. The only motive in
telling it at all would be to prevent, not to punish: if the previous
one is effected by other means, it is charity only to forbear the
relation of matters which would breed hatred, and probably provoke
strife. This made me silent; and, full of new hope--the hope that
having discarded all your old associates and removed from all your
old haunts, you would become mine entirely--I felt a new strength
in my frame, a new life in my breast, and a glow upon my cheeks as
within my soul, which seemed a guaranty for a long and happy term
of that love which had begun in my bosom with the first moments of
its childish consciousness and confidence.