a month and was not called for, I found means to have the copy
of it put into his own hands at a coffee-house, where I had by
inquiry found he used to go.
This letter forced an answer from him, by which, though I
found I was to be abandoned, yet I found he had sent a letter
to me some time before, desiring me to go down to the Bath
again. Its contents I shall come to presently.
It is true that sick-beds are the time when such correspondences
as this are looked on with different countenances, and seen
with other eyes than we saw them with, or than they appeared
with before. My lover had been at the gates of death, and at
the very brink of eternity; and, it seems, had been struck with
a due remorse, and with sad reflections upon his past life of
gallantry and levity; and among the rest, criminal correspondence
with me, which was neither more nor less than a long-continued
life of adultery, and represented itself as it really was, not as
it had been formerly thought by him to be, and he looked upon
it now with a just and religious abhorrence.
I cannot but observe also, and leave it for the direction of my
sex in such cases of pleasure, that whenever sincere repentance
succeeds such a crime as this, there never fails to attend a
hatred of the object; and the more the affection might seem to
be before, the hatred will be the more in proportion. It will
always be so, indeed it can be no otherwise; for there cannot
be a true and sincere abhorrence of the offence, and the love
to the cause of it remain; there will, with an abhorrence of the
sin, be found a detestation of the fellow-sinner; you can expect
no other.
I found it so here, though good manners and justice in this
gentleman kept him from carrying it on to any extreme but the
short history of his part in this affair was thus: he perceived
by my last letter, and by all the rest, which he went for after,
that I was not gone to Bath, that his first letter had not come
to my hand; upon which he write me this following:–
‘MADAM,–I am surprised that my letter, dated the 8th of last
month, did not come to your hand; I give you my word it was
delivered at your lodgings, and to the hands of your maid.
‘I need not acquaint you with what has been my condition
for some time past; and how, having been at the edge of the
grave, I am, by the unexpected and undeserved mercy of
Heaven, restored again. In the condition I have been in, it
cannot be strange to you that our unhappy correspondence
had not been the least of the burthens which lay upon my
conscience. I need say no more; those things that must be
repented of, must be also reformed.
I wish you would thing of going back to the Bath. I enclose
you here a bill for #50 for clearing yourself at your lodgings,
and carrying you down, and hope it will be no surprise to you
to add, that on this account only, and not for any offence given
me on your side, I can see you no more. I will take due care
of the child; leave him where he is, or take him with you, as
you please. I wish you the like reflections, and that they may
be to your advantage.–I am,’ etc.
I was struck with this letter as with a thousand wounds, such
as I cannot describe; the reproaches of my own conscience were
such as I cannot express, for I was not blind to my own crime;
and I reflected that I might with less offence have continued
with my brother, and lived with him as a wife, since there was
no crime in our marriage on that score, neither of us knowing it.
But I never once reflected that I was all this while a married
woman, a wife to Mr. —- the linen-draper, who, though he