for having conducted him clear of this
conspiracy, and kept his station with great tranquillity till the hour of
meeting, when he beheld his enraged Thalestris take the same route, and
enjoyed her disappointment with ineffable satisfaction.

Thus favoured with a pretext, he took his leave of her, in a letter,
giving her to understand, that he was no stranger to the barbarous snare
she had laid for him; and upbraiding her with having made such an
ungrateful return for all his tenderness and attachment. She was not
backward in conveying a reply to this expostulation, which seemed to have
been dictated in all the distraction of a proud woman who sees her
vengeance baffled, as well as her love disdained. Her letter was nothing
but a succession of reproaches, menaces, and incoherent execrations. She
taxed him with knavery, insensibility, and dissimulation; imprecated a
thousand curses upon his head, and threatened not only to persecute his
life with all the arts that hell and malice could inspire, but also to
wound him in the person of her daughter-in-law, who should be enclosed
for life in a convent, where she should have leisure to repent of those
loose and disorderly practices which he had taught her to commit, and of
which she could not pretend innocence, as they had it in their power to
confront her with the evidence of her lover's own confession. Yet all
this denunciation was qualified with an alternative, by which he was
given to understand, that the gates of mercy were still open, and that
penitence was capable of washing out the deepest stain of guilt.

Ferdinand read the whole remonstrance with great composure and
moderation, and was content to incur the hazard of her hate, rather than
put her to the trouble of making such an effort of generosity, as would
induce her to forgive the heinous offence he had committed; nor did his
apprehension for Wilhelmina in the least influence his behaviour on this
occasion. So zealous was he for her spiritual concerns, that he would
have been glad to hear she had actually taken the veil; but he knew such
a step was not at all agreeable to her disposition, and that no violence
would be offered to her inclinations on that score, unless her stepmother
should communicate to the father that letter of Fathom's which she had
intercepted, and by which the German would be convinced of his daughter's
backsliding; but this measure, he rightly supposed, the wife would not
venture to take