I wish you would think of going back to the Bath. I enclose you here a
bill for #50 for clearing yourself at your lodgings, and carrying you
down, and hope it will be no surprise to you to add, that on this
account only, and not for any offence given me on your side, I can see
you no more. I will take due care of the child; leave him where he is,
or take him with you, as you please. I wish you the like reflections,
and that they may be to your advantage.--I am,' etc.
I was struck with this letter as with a thousand wounds, such as I
cannot describe; the reproaches of my own conscience were such as I
cannot express, for I was not blind to my own crime; and I reflected
that I might with less offence have continued with my brother, and
lived with him as a wife, since there was no crime in our marriage on
that score, neither of us knowing it.
But I never once reflected that I was all this while a married woman, a
wife to Mr. ---- the linen-draper, who, though he had left me by the
necessity of his circumstances, had no power to discharge me from the
marriage contract which was between us, or to give me a legal liberty
to marry again; so that I had been no less than a whore and an
adulteress all this while. I then reproached myself with the liberties
I had taken, and how I had been a snare to this gentleman, and that
indeed I was principal in the crime; that now he was mercifully
snatched out of the gulf by a convincing work upon his mind, but that I
was left as if I was forsaken of God's grace, and abandoned by Heaven
to a continuing in my wickedness.
Under these reflections I continued very pensive and sad for near
month, and did not go down to the Bath, having no inclination to be
with the woman whom I was with before; lest, as I thought, she should
prompt me to some wicked course of life again, as she had done; and
besides, I was very loth she should know I was cast off as above.
And now I was greatly perplexed about my little boy. It was death to
me to part with the child, and yet when I considered the danger of
being one time or other left with him to keep without a maintenance to
support him, I then resolved to leave him where he was; but then I
concluded also to be near him myself too, that I then might have the
satisfaction of seeing him, without the care of providing for him.