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riage. I parted from him in 1833, and in 1835, as my family can witness, for violence such as is brought before police-courts; and I returned to him on his own passionate entreaty that I would not 'crush' but 'forgive him,' and that he 'went on his knees to me for pardon.' I was safe out of his power, and my reputation unsullied, « when he made this prayer; I returned, and five months after this letter we were again definitively parted. That parting was followed by the attempt publicly to disgrace me. After that public disgrace, he did, as he admits, ask me to return to him. But that is not, as he would have the world believe, his only 'vacillating' attempt at reconciliation. My husband, who pretends to have loved me so tenderly, and thrown me off so completely, did neither one nor the other. He maltreated me while with him; and he has been in almost constant correspondence with me, and occasionally a visitor at my house, down to the winter of the year of 1850. Would any one believe that two years after 'our reunion was rendered impossible,' he wrote letter after letter endeavouring to arrange for our living together again, and speaks of 'shielding me in a husband's arms?' That at the time he alludes to, he was endeavouring to resist my petition to the Chancellor to regain possession of my children; that he then gave his solemn word of honour to Mr Hardwicke, a brother magistrate, that he had not been raising a fresh scandal against me; that he never ventured to defend my petition to the Chancellor; that in his letters, two years subsequently, he begs me, with coaxing expressions, to call in all copies of a pamphlet containing our strange correspondence; and in one of these letters, of 1842, speaks of himself as 'your Geordie of former and happier years!' That not only then, but in all years since, I can produce letters more or less friendly and affectionate; asking services of me; thanking me for serving him; announcing the marriage of his sister; full of phrases of jesting and affection; many beginning 'Dear Carry' and 'Dearest Carry;' anxious about me; complimenting me; asking 'how my travelling alone can be obviated;' finally (for I weary over these instances of caprice), in April, 1846, he begins:— 'Your kind letter, written in the good old spirit, which should never have been broken ;' and on Christmas-day, 1846, exactly ten years and six months after the trial, and six years after my petition to the Chancellor, he hopes my health is 'crisp like the frost'—praises my brother—signs himself 'Yours ever'—and in another letter begs I will embrace the boys 'for absent me, as well as for yourself!' Is it possible to conceive, that in the face of all this, Mr Norton can so depend on my not answering him, as to venture to print such mis-statements? Is it possible he does not see that they leave him in this position: either he disbelieves these calumnies, which nevertheless he reiterates to my injury when it suits him; or, believing me to be a bad woman, he wishes me to return home? It is indeed difficult to choose which alternative shall save his honour!
