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reputation was unsullied. I was with my sister; and I returned, in answer to his imploring prayers, only to be rewarded with attempted ruin and disgrace! He said "no words could prove his remorse." He said, " As there is a God above us, who will judge our actions, I think I have a right to ask you to trust to me for the future. If I cannot make you happy, let us then quietly and rationally separate, I declaring to the world that the cause of it was not any imputation on you." He implored me by all that was dear and holy to grant a "complete" forgiveness—a "real" pardon—to write it the moment I had read his letter—to seal and send it by post, and not to let any one see it, for fear they should advise against it. He said, "You shall never repent of this; you shall not—you shall not." He adjured me not to "crush" him, and he ended his letter with the words, "I go on my knees to you! Have pity—have compassion on me!" I answered him: I pitied him: I went back to him: I believed then that he really repented, and grieved to lose me; I am convinced now, that it was part of a scheme: of a determination, at least, that if we were to part, he would make me rue the day on my own account. After my return, he treated me as he had done before. As to the conditions, they were broken before I had been two days in my home: and during a very severe illness which followed the agitation and misery to which I had been exposed, and in which I prematurely lost my infant, he behaved with the utmost harshness and neglect, leaving me to be nursed by my brother, and refusing to be answerable for the expenses incurred. Scarce a month after his last penitent and touching letter to me, my brother was again compelled to remind him that he appeared to have forgotten the reasons that made "interference on my behalf a duty," and that totally prevented his presuming to question the authority by which my brother interfered. This was in August, 1835. Things were fast driving to ruin. My family remained on the most formal and distant terms with Mr Norton, the male members
