and ours have had in his intrinsic nobleness.  She said the gloom, however, seemed to be even deeper when he came to the marriage; but she looked at it as the suffering of a peculiar being, to whom she was called to minister.  I said to her, that, even in the days of my childhood, I had heard of something very painful that had passed as they were in the carriage, immediately after marriage.  She then said that it was so; that almost his first words, when they were alone, were, that she might once have saved him; that, if she had accepted him when he first offered, she might have made him anything she pleased; but that, as it was, she would find she had married a devil.

The conversation, as recorded in Lady Anne Barnard’s Diary, seems only a continuation of the foregoing, and just what might have followed upon it.

I then asked how she became certain of the true cause.

She said, that, from the outset of their married life, his conduct towards her was strange and unaccountable, even during the first weeks after the wedding, while they were visiting her friends, and outwardly on good terms.  He seemed resolved to shake and combat both her religious principles and her views of the family state.  He tried to undermine her faith in Christianity as a rule of life by argument and by ridicule.  He set before her the Continental idea of the liberty of marriage; it being a simple partnership of friendship and property, the parties to which were allowed by one another to pursue their own separate individual tastes.  He told her, that, as he could not be expected to confine himself to her, neither should he expect or wish that she should confine herself to him; that she was young and pretty, and could have her lovers, and he should never object; and that she must allow him the same freedom.

She said that she did not comprehend to what this was tending till after they came to London, and his sister came to stay with them.

At what precise time the idea of an improper connection between her husband and his sister was first forced upon her, she did not say; but she told me how it was done.  She said that one night, in her presence, he treated his sister with a liberty which both shocked and astonished her.  Seeing her amazement and alarm, he came up to her, and said, in a sneering tone, ’I suppose you perceive you are not wanted here.  Go to your own room, and leave us alone.  We can amuse ourselves better without you.’

She said, ’I went to my room, trembling.  I fell down on my knees, and prayed to my heavenly Father to have mercy on them.  I thought, “What shall I do?"’

I remember, after this, a pause in the conversation, during which she seemed struggling with thoughts and emotions; and, for my part, I was unable to utter a word, or ask a question.