where I had laid myself so low and exposed
myself in a manner I had never been used to; that indeed I had never
sent for any letters after that to the place where I had ordered his to
be directed; and that, being so justly, as I thought, punished for my
weakness, I had nothing to do but to repent of being a fool, after I had
strictly adhered to a just principle before; that, however, as what I
did was rather from motions of gratitude than from real weakness,
however it might be construed by him, I had the satisfaction in myself
of having fully discharged the debt. I added, that I had not wanted
occasions of all the seeming advancements which the pretended felicity
of a marriage life was usually set off with, and might have been what I
desired not to name; but that, however low I had stooped to him, I had
maintained the dignity of female liberty against all the attacks either
of pride or avarice; and that I had been infinitely obliged to him for
giving me an opportunity to discharge the only obligation that
endangered me, without subjecting me to the consequence; and that I
hoped he was satisfied I had paid the debt by offering myself to be
chained, but was infinitely debtor to him another way for letting me
remain free.

He was so confounded at this discourse that he knew not what to say, and
for a good while he stood mute indeed; but recovering himself a little,
he said I run out into a discourse he hoped was over and forgotten, and
he did not intend to revive it; that he knew I had not had his letters,
for that, when he first came to England, he had been at the place to
which they were directed, and found them all lying there but one, and
that the people had not known how to deliver them; that he thought to
have had a direction there how to find me, but had the mortification to
be told that they did not so much as know who I was; that he was under a
great disappointment; and that I ought to know, in answer to all my
resentments, that he had done a long and, he hoped, a sufficient penance
for the slight that I had supposed he had put upon me; that it was true
(and I could not suppose any other) that upon the repulse I had given
them in a case so circumstanced as his was, and after such earnest
entreaties and such offers as he had made me, he went away with a mind
heartily grieved and full of resentment; that he had looked back on the
crime he had committed with some regret, but on the cruelty of my
treatment of the poo