We then returned home, and retired to my chamber, where I dictated, and Mary wrote as follows:
'Dear William,
'Prepare your mind for receiving a great and unexpected shock. To keep you no longer in suspense, learn that I am married.
'Before I had become acquainted with you, I was attached to another man, whose name I must beg leave to conceal. About a year since, circumstances compelled him to go abroad, and before his departure, he procured a written promise from me, to marry him on the first day of his return. You then came, and succeeded in rivalling him.
'As he never once wrote, after he had left the country, I concluded that he was dead. Yesterday, however, a letter from him was put into my hand, which announced his return, and appointed a private interview. I went. He had a clergyman in waiting to join our hands. I prayed, entreated, wept—all in vain.
'I became his wife.
'O William, pity, but do not blame me. If you are a man of honour and of feeling, never shew this letter, or tell its contents to one living soul. Do not even speak to myself on the subject of it.
'You see I pay your own feelings the compliment of not signing the name that I now bear.
'Adieu, dear William: adieu for ever.'
We then returned to the sitting-room, and found William there. While we were conversing, I took an opportunity to slip the letter, unperceived, into his hand, and to bid him read it in some other place. He retired with it, and we continued talking. But in about half an hour he hurried into the room, with an agitated countenance; stopped opposite to Mary, and looked at her earnestly.