your house and your protection, I was
not governed by caprice or impulse. For some time I have seen that,
sooner or later, it must come to this; that the cord uniting us was
too severely strained, and must snap. I did not suppose the time so
near at hand--that you would drag upon it now with such a sudden
force. But the deed is done, and we are apart forever. I cannot live
with you again--your presence would suffocate me. There was a mutual
wrong in our marriage; but I was most to blame; for I knew that I
did not and never could love you as I believed a husband should be
loved. But you had extorted from me a promise of marriage, and I
believed it to be my duty to fulfill that promise. Young,
inexperienced, blind to the future, I took up the burdens you laid
at my feet, and believed myself strong enough to carry them all the
days of my life. It was a fatal error. How painfully I have
struggled on--how prayerfully, how patiently, how self-denyingly,
you can never know. Yet, without avail. I have fallen by the way,
and there is not strength enough in me to lift the burdens again. I
know this, and One besides; and I am content to rest the case with
Him. The world will blame--the church censure--the law condemn. Let
it be so. All that is light to the sufferings I have endured, and
from which I have fled.

"I cannot see you, Mr. Dexter--_I will not see you_. Our ways in
this world have parted, and forever. The act was not mine, but
yours. You flung me off with a force that overcame all scruple--all
question of right--all effort to cling to you as my husband. I was
trying, in my feeble way--for not much power remained--to be a
dutiful wife, when you extinguished all hope of success by a charge
as false as the evil spirit who whispered in your too willing ears a
suspicion of infidelity against one who had never permitted a
thought of wrong towards her husband to enter even the outermost
portal of her mind. I had not seen the person to whom you allude
since my accidental meeting with him at Newport, so basely construed
into design; and his passing my window at the moment you returned
home, was as unexpected to me as to you.

"I had hoped that my previous solemn assurances were sufficient to
give you confidence in my integrity. But this was an error. You had
no faith in me; and assailed me with violence when my thoughts were
as true to honor as ever were yours. Did you imagine that I could
lie passive at your feet, so trample