care of the former, in pity to the latter, which I applaud, and
shall second with all, my might."

But she does not say whether the young wife, a stranger and lonely
yonder, wants another woman and her daughter Cornelia to be lavishing so
much inflamed interest on her husband or not. That young wife is always
silent--we are never allowed to hear from her. She must have opinions
about such things, she cannot be indifferent, she must be approving or
disapproving, surely she would speak if she were allowed--even to-day
and from her grave she would, if she could, I think--but we get only the
other side, they keep her silent always.

"He has deeply interested us. In the course of your intimacy
he must have made you feel what we now feel for him. He is
seeking a house close to us--"

Ah! he is not close enough yet, it seems--

"and if he succeeds we shall have an additional motive to
induce you to come among us in the summer."

The reader would puzzle a long time and not guess the biographer's
comment upon the above letter. It is this:

"These sound like words of s considerate and judicious friend."

That is what he thinks. That is, it is what he thinks he thinks. No,
that is not quite it: it is what he thinks he can stupefy a particularly
and unspeakably dull reader into thinking it is what he thinks. He
makes that comment with the knowledge that Shelley is in love with this
woman's daughter, and that it is because of the fascinations of these
two that Shelley has deserted his wife--for this month, considering all
the circumstances, and his new passion, and his employment of the time,
amounted to desertion; that is its rightful name. We cannot know how
the wife regarded it and felt about it; but if she could have read the
letter which Shelley was writing to Hogg four or five days later, we
could guess her thought and how she felt. Hear him:.......

"I have been staying with Mrs. Boinville for the last month;
I have escaped, in the society of all that philosophy and
friendship combine, from the dismaying solitude of myself."

It is fair to conjecture that he was feeling ashamed.

"They have revived in my heart the expiring flame of life.
I have felt myself translated to a paradise which has nothing
of mortality but its transitoriness; my heart sickens at the
view of that