I
provided amply for her future exigencies, and conveyed her by night to
the distance of ten or twelve miles, where we met the stage, in which I
had previously secured her a seat. The agony of her grief at being thus
obliged to leave her mother's house baffles all description.
It very sensibly affected me, I know. I was almost a penitent. I am
sure I acted like one, whether I were sincere or not. She chose to go
where she was totally unknown. She would leave the stage, she said,
before it reached Boston, and take passage in a more private carriage to
Salem, or its vicinity, where she would fix her abode; chalking the
initials of my name over the door, as a signal to me of her residence.
She is exceedingly depressed, and says she neither expects nor wishes to
survive her lying in. Insanity, for aught I know, must be my lot if she
should die. But I will not harbor the idea. I hope, one time or other,
to have the power to make her amends, even by marriage. My wife may be
provoked, I imagine, to sue for a divorce. If she should, she would find
no difficulty in obtaining it, and then I would take Eliza in her stead;
though I confess that the idea of being thus connected with a woman whom
I have been enabled to dishonor, would be rather hard to surmount. It
would hurt even my delicacy, little as you may think me to possess, to
have a wife whom I know to be seducible.
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