_intimate_ garment, which revealed
rather more than it concealed--for they had just before been playing
the very interesting game of "hide and seek," and had not yet resumed
all their appropriate garments. I had formerly regarded lady Hawley as
the very _beau ideal_ of all that was dignified, haughty and majestic;
but that night she looked lewd and sensual, in an eminent degree, and
appeared utterly reckless of all decency. She exposed her person in a
manner that astonished me, and seemed to abandon herself without
reserve, to all the promptings of her voluptuous nature. Her
appearance, conversation and actions were not without their influence
on me, you may be sure; and if ever I envied mortal man, it was that
young officer, who could revel at will in the arms of the beautiful
wanton at his side.

"The Captain, reclining his head upon her fair bosom, said--

"'And so Adelaide, in a few days your odious husband will return, and
terminate these rapturous blisses. Why in the devil's name don't the
accursed old man die of apoplexy, or break his neck, or get shot in a
duel, or do something to relieve us of his hated interference with our
stolen joys?'

"'Ah, St. Clair,' answered the lady, with a glance of passion--'would
that the old man were dead! Since I have tasted the sweets of your
society--since I first listened to the music of your voice, and since
first this heart beat tumultuously against yours, my whole nature is
changed--my blood is turned to fire; my religion is my love for you;
my deity is your image, and my heaven--is in your arms. Oh,' she
suddenly exclaimed, as the rich blood mantled on her face and
neck--'how terrible it is for a young and passionate woman to be
linked in marriage to an old, impotent, cold, passionless being, who
claims the name of _man_, but is not entitled to it! And then if she
solaces herself with a lover--as she must, or die--she is continually
agitated with fears of her husband's jealousy, and the dread of
discovery. Like the thirsty traveller in a barren waste, her soul
yearns for an ocean of delights--and pants and longs in vain.
Husband--would that there was no such word, no such relation as it
implies--'tis slavery, 'tis madness, to be chained for life to but one
source of love, when a thousand streams would not satiate or overflow.
Yet the world--the world--disgraces and condemns such as I am, if
discove