hard to answer, were there
not other questions that I could ask. Of course I was
wrong to marry him. I know that now, and I repent my sin
in sackcloth and ashes. But I did not leave him after
I married him till he had brought against me horrid
accusations,--accusations which a woman could not bear,
which, if he believed them himself, must have made it
impossible for him to live with me. Could any wife live
with a husband who declared to her face that he believed
that she had a lover? And in this very letter he says that
which almost repeats the accusation. He has asked me how I
can have dared to receive you, and desires me never either
to see you or to wish to see you again. And yet he sent
for you to Loughlinter before you came, in order that you
might act as a friend between us. How could I possibly
return to a man whose power of judgment has so absolutely
left him?

I have a conscience in the matter, a conscience that
is very far from being at ease. I have done wrong, and
have shipwrecked every hope in this world. No woman was
ever more severely punished. My life is a burden to me,
and I may truly say that I look for no peace this side
the grave. I am conscious, too, of continued sin,--a
sin unlike other sins,--not to be avoided, of daily
occurrence, a sin which weighs me to the ground. But I
should not sin the less were I to return to him. Of course
he can plead his marriage. The thing is done. But it can't
be right that a woman should pretend to love a man whom
she loathes. I couldn't live with him. If it were simply
to go and die, so that his pride would be gratified by my
return, I would do it; but I should not die. There would
come some horrid scene, and I should be no more a wife to
him than I am while living here.

He now threatens me with publicity. He declares that
unless I return to him he will put into some of the papers
a statement of the whole case. Of course this would be
very bad. To be obscure and untalked of is all the comfort
that now remains to me. And he might say things that would
be prejudicial to others,--especially to you. Could this
in any way be prevented? I suppose the papers would
publish anything; and you know how greedily people will
read slander about those whose names are in any way
remarkable. In my heart I believe he is insane; but it is
very hard t