I cannot deal in conjectures. The subject, I find by my feelings since I began this letter, is too agonizing,--too bewildering. It carries back my thoughts to a time of misery, to which distance, instead of soothing it into apathy, only adds a new sting.
A spotless reputation was once dear to me, but I have now torn the passion from my heart. I am weary of pursuing a phantom. No one has pursued it with more eagerness and perseverance than I; and what has been the fruit of my labour but reiterated mortification and disappointment?
An upright demeanour, a self-acquitting conscience, are not sufficient for our safety. Calumny and misapprehension have no bounds to their rage and their activity.
How little did my thoughtless heart imagine the horrid images which beset the minds of my mother and my husband! Happy ignorance! Would to Heaven it had continued! Since knowledge puts it not in my power to remove the error, it ought to be avoided as the greatest evil.
While I know my own motives, and am convinced of their purity, let me hold in contempt the opinions of the world respecting me. They can never have a basis in truth. Be they favourable or otherwise, they cannot fail to be built on imperfect knowledge. The praise of others is therefore as little to be sought or prized as their censure to be dreaded or shunned.
Heaven knows how much I value the favour and affection of my mother; but, clear as it is, I must give it up. How can I retain it? I cannot confute the charge. I must not acknowledge a guilt that does not belong to me. Added, therefore, to her belief of my guilt, must be the persuasion of my being a hardened and obdurate criminal.
What will she think of my last two letters? The former tacitly confessing my unworthiness and promising compliance with all her wishes, the next asserting my innocence and refusing her generous offers. My first she will probably ascribe to an honourable compunction, left to operate without your control. In the second she will trace your influence. Left to myself, she will imagine me capable of acting as she wishes; but, guided by you, she will lose all hopes of me, and resign me to my fate.
Indeed, I have given up my mother. There is no other alternative but that of giving up you; and in this case I can hesitate, indeed, but I cannot decide against you.
I am placed in a very painful situation. I feel as if every hour spent under this roof was an encroachment on another's rights. My mother's bounty is not withheld, merely because my rebellion against her will is not completed; but I that feel no doubt, and whom mere consideration of her pleasure, important as it is, will never make swerve from my purpose,--ought I to enjoy goods to which I have forfeited all title? Ought I to wait for an express command to begone from her doors? Ought I to lay her under the necessity of declaring her will?
Yet if I change my lodgings immediately, without waiting her directions, will she not regard my conduct as contemptuous? Shall I not then be a rebel indeed?--one that scorns her favour, and is eager to get rid of all my obligations?