“I should think it all true.”
“Indeed! I think not.”
“Why do you doubt, and what?”
“I doubt those portions in which he insists upon my wife's integrity.”
“Wherefore?”
“There are many reasons; the principal of which is her singular concealment of the truth. She suffers a strange man to offend her virtue with the most atrocious familiarities, and says nothing to her husband, who, alone, could have redressed the wrong and remedied the impertinence.”
“That certainly is a staggering fact.”
“According to his own admission, she warns him to fly from the wrath of her husband, to which his audacity had exposed him—warns him, in her night-dress, and from the window of her chamber.”
“True, true! I had forgotten that.”
“Look at all the circumstances. He haunts the house—according to his own showing, persecutes her with attentions, which are so marked, that, when he finds her husband ignorant of them, leads him to the conclusion—which is natural—that they are not displeasing to the wife. He avails himself of the privileges of the waltz, at the marriage of Mrs. Delaney, to gratify his lustful anticipations. He presses her arm and waist with his d——d fingers. Rides home with her, and, according to his story, takes other liberties, which she baffles and sets aside. But, mark the truth. Though she requires him to set her down in the street—though she makes terms for his forbearance—a wife making terms with a libertine—yet he evidently sees her into the house, and when she is taken sick, hurries for the mother and the physician. He tells just enough of the story to convict himself, but suppresses everything which may convict her. How know I that this resistance in the carriage was more than a sham? How know I that he did not attend her in the house? That they did not dabble together on their way through the dark piazza—along the stairs?—Nay, what proof is there that he did not find his way, with polluting purpose, into the very chamber?—that chamber, from which, not three weeks after, she bade him fly to avoid my wrath! What makes her so precious of his life—the life of one who pursues her with lust and dishonor—if she does not burn with like passions? But there is more.”