“Margaret, I came to see you from a sense of duty to God, and to you too: I came to try and comfort you; but how can I give consolation to you if you talk of your being ill-fated and doomed to despair? Do not say that the doom of fate has anything to do with your present situation. You know as well as I do, that unless you had misconducted yourself, you might have been as happy now as you were when I saw you after your return from Bury. Put your sin upon yourself, and not upon your fate. You know the real cause of this unhappiness.”
“Ah! dear lady, what would you have done if you had been me and in my place?”
“I might have done as you did; but I do think, Margaret, knowing what a friend I had always been to you, that you might have placed confidence in me, and have told me Laud was in prison. I observed that you were much disturbed, and not yourself, when I last came to see you, but I could not divine the cause.”
“I was afraid to tell you, madam, lest you should persuade me to give up my acquaintance with him, and I had learned much more to his credit than I knew before.”
“And so, by following your own inclination, you have brought your lover and yourself to an untimely death. Oh, Margaret! had you confided in me, I should have persuaded you to have tried him until you had obtained your discharge from prison; then, had he been a respectable and altered man, I should have approved of your marriage.”
“But think, dear lady, how constant he had been to me for so many years! Surely his patience deserved my confidence.”
“And what good did you ever find it do you, Margaret? Look at the consequences.”
“I could not foresee them. How could I then look at them?”
“Though you were so blind as not to foresee the consequences, others, with more reflection and forethought, might have done so for you; and, assuredly, had you hinted the matter to me, I should have prevented what has happened.”