, but she would not be repulsed.
Self-invited, she made herself my frequent guest; took unsolicited part
in my concerns; did me many kind offices; and, at length, in spite of my
counter-inclination, won upon my sympathy and gratitude.

"No one in the world, did I fondly think, had I less reason to fear than
Mrs. Waring. Her character excited not the slightest apprehension for my
own safety. She was upwards of forty, nowise remarkable for grace or
beauty; tawdry in her dress; accustomed to render more conspicuous the
traces of age by her attempts to hide them; the mother of a numerous
family, with a mind but slenderly cultivated; always careful to save
appearances; studiously preserving distance with my husband, and he,
like myself, enduring rather than wishing her society. What could I fear
from the arts of such a one?

"But alas! the woman had consummate address. Patience, too, that nothing
could tire. Watchfulness that none could detect. Insinuation the wiliest
and most subtle. Thus wound she herself into my affections, by an
unexampled perseverance in seeming kindness; by tender confidence; by
artful glosses of past misconduct; by self-rebukes and feigned
contritions.

"Never were stratagems so intricate, dissimulation so profound! But
still, that such a one should seduce my husband; young, generous,
ambitious, impatient of contumely and reproach, and surely not
indifferent; before this fatal intercourse, not indifferent to his wife
and child!--Yet so it was!

"I saw his discontents; his struggles; I heard him curse this woman, and
the more deeply for my attempts, unconscious as I was of her
machinations, to reconcile them to each other, to do away what seemed a
causeless indignation, or antipathy against her. How little I suspected
the nature of the conflict in his heart, between a new passion and the
claims of pride; of conscience and of humanity; the claims of a child
and a wife; a wife, already in affliction, and placing all that yet
remained of happiness, in the firmness of his virtue; in the continuance
of his love; a wife, at the very hour of his meditated flight, full of
terrors at the near approach of an event whose agonies demand a double
share of a husband's supporting, encouraging love----

"Good Heaven! For what evils are some of thy creatures reserved!
Resignation to thy decree, in the last and most cruel distress, was,
indeed, a hard task.

"He was gone. Some unavoidable engagement calling him t