ey met by accident upon the New Road; he
alighted from his horse, and walked with her for some time; and the
rencounter passed, as she assured me, without producing in her any
oppressive emotion.

Be it observed, by the way, and I may be supposed best to have known the
real state of the case, she never spoke of Mr. Imlay with acrimony, and
was displeased when any person, in her hearing, expressed contempt of
him. She was characterised by a strong sense of indignation; but her
emotions of this sort were short-lived, and in no long time subsided
into a dignified sereneness and equanimity.

The question of her connection with Mr. Imlay, as we have seen, was not
completely dismissed, till March 1796. But it is worthy to be observed,
that she did not, like ordinary persons under extreme anguish of mind,
suffer her understanding, in the mean time, to sink into listlessness
and debility. The most inapprehensive reader may conceive what was the
mental torture she endured, when he considers, that she was twice, with
an interval of four months, from the end of May to the beginning of
October, prompted by it to purposes of suicide. Yet in this period she
wrote her Letters from Norway. Shortly after its expiration she prepared
them for the press, and they were published in the close of that year.
In January 1796, she finished the sketch of a comedy, which turns, in
the serious scenes, upon the incidents of her own story. It was offered
to both the winter-managers, and remained among her papers at the
period of her decease; but it appeared to me to be in so crude and
imperfect a state, that I judged it most respectful to her memory to
commit it to the flames. To understand this extraordinary degree of
activity, we must recollect however the entire solitude, in which most
of her hours were at that time consumed.

CHAP. IX.

1796, 1797.

I am now led, by the progress of the story, to the last branch of her
history, the connection between Mary and myself. And this I shall relate
with the same simplicity that has pervaded every other part of my
narrative. If there ever were any motives of prudence or delicacy, that
could impose a qualification upon the story, they are now over. They
could have no relation but to factitious rules of decorum. There are no
circumstances of her life, that, in the judgment of honour and reason,
could brand her with disgrace. Never did there exist a human being, that
needed, with less fear, expo