. The letter that he had left on
the table was full of expressions of love and remorse, to say nothing
of excuses for his infamous behavior to me. He declared that he had been
entrapped into a private marriage with a profligate woman when he was
little more than a lad. They had long since separated by common consent.
When he first courted me, he had every reason to believe that she was
dead. How he had been deceived in this particular, and how she had
discovered that he had married me, he had yet to find out. Knowing
her furious temper, he had gone away with her, as the one means
of preventing an application to the justices and a scandal in the
neighborhood. In a day or two he would purchase his release from her by
an addition to the allowance which she had already received from him:
he would return to me and take me abroad, out of the way of further
annoyance. I was his wife in the sight of Heaven; I was the only woman
he had ever loved; and so on, and so on.

"Do you now see, sir, the risk that I ran of his discovering me if I
remained in your neighborhood? The bare thought of it made my flesh
creep. I was determined never again to see the man who had so cruelly
deceived me. I am in the same mind still--with this difference, that I
might consent to see him, if I could be positively assured first of the
death of his wife. That is not likely to happen. Let me get on with my
letter, and tell you what I did on my arrival in Edinburgh.

"The coachman recommended me to the house in the Canongate where you
found me lodging. I wrote the same day to relatives of my father, living
in Glasgow, to tell them where I was, and in what a forlorn position I
found myself.

"I was answered by return of post. The head of the family and his wife
requested me to refrain from visiting them in Glasgow. They had business
then in hand which would take them to Edinburgh, and I might expect to
see them both with the least possible delay.

"They arrived, as they had promised, and they expressed themselves
civilly enough. Moreover, they did certainly lend me a small sum of
money when they found how poorly my purse was furnished. But I don't
think either husband or wife felt much for me. They recommended me, at
parting, to apply to my father's other relatives, living in England. I
may be doing them an injustice, but I fancy they were eager to get me
(as the common phrase is) off their hands.

"The day when the departure of my relatives left me