’Yes, I warrant, I must creep to the violator, and be thankful to him for doing me poor justice!

’Do you not already see me (pursuing the advice you give) with a downcast eye, appear before his friends, and before my own, (supposing the latter would at last condescend to own me,) divested of that noble confidence which arises from a mind unconscious of having deserved reproach?

’Do you not see me creep about mine own house, preferring all my honest maidens to myself—­as if afraid, too, to open my lips, either by way of reproof or admonition, lest their bolder eyes should bid me look inward, and not expect perfection from them?

’And shall I entitle the wretch to upbraid me with his generosity, and his pity; and perhaps to reproach me for having been capable of forgiving crimes of such a nature?

’I once indeed hoped, little thinking him so premeditatedly vile a man, that I might have the happiness to reclaim him:  I vainly believed that he loved me well enough to suffer my advice for his good, and the example I humbly presumed I should be enabled to set him, to have weight with him; and the rather, as he had no mean opinion of my morals and understanding:  But now what hope is there left for this my prime hope?—­Were I to marry him, what a figure should I make, preaching virtue and morality to a man whom I had trusted with opportunities to seduce me from all my own duties!—­And then, supposing I were to have children by such a husband, must it not, think you, cut a thoughtful person to the heart; to look round upon her little family, and think she had given them a father destined, without a miracle, to perdition; and whose immoralities, propagated among them by his vile example, might, too probably, bring down a curse upon them?  And, after all, who knows but that my own sinful compliances with a man, who might think himself entitled to my obedience, might taint my own morals, and make me, instead of a reformer, an imitator of him?—­For who can touch pitch, and not be defiled?

’Let me then repeat, that I truly despise this man!  If I know my own heart, indeed I do!—­I pity him! beneath my very pity as he is, I nevertheless pity him!—­But this I could not do, if I still loved him:  for, my dear, one must be greatly sensible of the baseness and ingratitude of those we love.  I love him not, therefore! my soul disdains communion with him.

’But, although thus much is due to resentment, yet have I not been so far carried away by its angry effects as to be rendered incapable of casting about what I ought to do, and what could be done, if the Almighty, in order to lengthen the time of my penitence, were to bid me to live.