“One opinion of hers, however, had very much alarmed me. You will find it expressed in the letter marked No. 8, in this collection. When I complained to her of the approaches of Mr. Edgerton, and declared my purpose of appealing to you if they were continued, she earnestly and expressly exhorted me against any such proceeding. She assured me that such a step would only lend to violence and bloodshed—reminded me of your sudden anger—your previous duel—and insisted that nothing more was necessary to check the impertinence than my own firmness and dignity. Perhaps this would have been enough, were it always practicable to maintain the reserve and coldness which was proper to effect this object, and, indeed, I could not but perceive that the effect was produced in considerable degree by this course. Mr. Edgerton visited the house less frequently; grew less impressive in his manner, and much more humble, until that painful and humiliating night of my mother's marriage. That night he asked me to dance with him. I declined; but afterward he came to me accompanied by my mother. She whispered in my ears that I was harsh in my refusal, and called my attention to his wretched appearance. Had I reflected upon it then, as I did afterward, this very allusion would have been sufficient to have determined me not to consent;—but I was led away by her suggestions of pity, and stood up with him for a cotillion. But the music changed, the set was altered, and the Spanish dance was substituted in its place. In the course of this dance, I could not deceive myself as to the degree of presumption which my partner displayed; and, but for the appearance of the thing, and because I did not wish to throw the room into disorder, I would have stopped and taken my seat long before it was over. When I did take my seat, I found myself still attended by him, and it was with difficulty that I succeeded finally in defeating his perseverance, by throwing myself into the midst of a set of elderly ladies, where he could no longer distinguish me with his attentions. In the meantime you had left the room. You had deserted me. Ah! Clifford, to what annoyance did your absence expose me that night! To that absence, do we owe that I lost the only dear pledge of love that God had ever vouchsafed us—and you know how greatly my own life was perilled. Think not, dearest, that I speak this to reproach you; and yet—could you have remained!—could you have loved, and longed to be and remain with me, as most surely did I long for your presence only and always—ah! how much sweeter had been our joys—how more pure our happiness—our faith—with now—perhaps, even now—the dear angel whom we then lost, living and smiling beneath our eyes, and linking our mutual hearts more and more firmly together than before!
“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.
“But one painful scene and hour I was yet compelled to endure the night before our departure. Mr. Edgerton came to play his flute under our window. I say Mr. Edgerton, but it was only by a sort of instinct that I fixed upon him as the musician. Perhaps it was because I knew not what other person to suspect. Frequently, before this night, had I heard this music; but on this occasion he seemed to have approached more nearly to the dwelling; and, indeed, I finally discovered that he was actually beneath the China-tree that stood on the south front of the cottage. I was asleep when the music began. He must have been playing for some time before I awakened. How I was awakened I know not; but something disturbed me, and I then saw you about to leave the room stealthily. I heard your feet upon the stairs, and in the next moment I discovered one of your pistols lying upon the window-sill, just beneath my eyes. This alarmed me; a thousand apprehensions rushed into my brain; all the suggestions of strife and bloodshed which my mother had ever told me, filled my mind; and without knowing exactly what I did or said, I called out to the musician to fly with all possible speed. He did so; and after a delay which was to me one of the most cruel apprehension, you returned in safety. Whether you suspected, and what, I could not conjecture; but if you had any suspicions of me, you did not seem to entertain any of him, for you spoke of him afterward with the same warm tone of friendship as before.
“That something in my conduct had not pleased you, I could see from your deportment as we travelled the next morning. You were sad, and very silent and abstracted. This disappeared, however, and, day by day, my happiness, my hope, my confidence in you, in myself, in all things, increased—and I felt assured of realizing that perfect idea of felicity which I proposed to myself from the moment when you declared your purpose to emigrate. Were we not happy, husband—so happy at M——, for weeks, for months—always, morning, noon, and night—until the reappearance of this false friend of yours? Then, it seemed to me as if everything changed. Then, that other friend of yours—who, though he never treated me with aught but respect, I yet can call no friend of mine—Mr. Kingsley, drew you away again from your home—carried you with him to his haunts—detained you late and long, by night and day—and I was left once more exposed to the free and frequent familiarity of Mr. Edgerton. He renewed his former habits; his looks were more presuming, and his attentions more direct and loathsome than ever. More than once I strove to speak with you on this hateful subject; but it was so shocking, and you were so fond of him, and I still had my fears! At length, moved by compassion, you brought him to our house. Blind and devoted to him—with a blindness and devotion beyond that which the noblest friendship would deserve, but which renders tenfold more hateful the dishonest and treacherous person upon whom it is thrown away—you command me to meet him with kindness—to tend his bed of sickness—to soothe his moments of sadness and despondency—to expose myself to his insolence!
“Husband, my soul revolts at this charge! I have disobeyed it and you; and I must justify myself in this my disobedience. I must at length declare the truth. I have striven to do so in the preceding narrative. This narrative I began when you brought this false friend into our dwelling. He must leave it. You must command his departure. Do not think me moved by any unhappy or unbecoming prejudices against him. My antipathies have arisen solely from his presumption and misconduct. I esteemed him—nay, I even liked him—before. I liked his taste for the arts, his amiable manners, his love of music and poetry, and all those graces of the superior mind and education, which dignify humanity, and indicate its probable destinies. But when he showed me how false he was to a friendship so free and confiding as was yours—when he abused my eyes and ears with expressions unbecoming in him, and insulting and ungenerous to me—I loathed and spurned him. While he is in your house I will strive and treat him civilly, but do not tax me further. For your sake I have borne much; for the sake of peace, and to avoid strife and crime, I have been silent—perhaps too long. The strange, improper letters of my mother, which I enclose, almost make me tremble to think that I have paid but too much deference to her opinion. But, in the expulsion of this miserable man from your dwelling, there needs no violence, there needs no crime! A word will overwhelm him with shame. Remember, dear husband, that he is feeble and sick; it is probable he has not long to live. Perform your painful duty privily, and with all the forbearance which is consistent with a proper firmness. In truth, he has done us no real harm. Let us remember THAT! If anything, he has only made me love you the more, by showing so strongly how generous is the nature which he has so infamously abused. Once more, dear husband, do no violence. Let not our future days be embittered by any recollections of the present. Command, compel his departure, and come home to me, and keep with me always.
“Your own true wife,