“I have no eager desire for life; I can afford to submit to Providence. And now let me speak of a subject which is of more importance to me than any question as to the time I have to live. Let me speak to you of my honour--as a woman and as a wife. When you decreed that all ties between us except the one legal bond should be severed, your decree was absolute. There was no room left for discussion. You sent me your solicitor, who told me, with much delicate circumlocution, that your home was no longer to be my home. There was to be neither scandal, nor disgrace, nor punishment for me, who had sinned against my duty as a wife. I was only to be banished. I was too much in the wrong to dispute the justice of this sentence, Harold; too proud to sue for mercy. I let judgment go by default. You banished your wife from the fortress of home; you deposed her from an unassailable position to a doubtful standing; and you did this upon the strength of a packet of letters, which a bolder offender would have received at her own address, and which a more experienced sinner would have burned. I want you to grant me one favour, Harold,--read those letters before I die.” “I will read them when you please. Yes, I dare say I did wrong in cancelling our union upon such trifling evidence of error; but I acted from my own instinct. I have been a Sybarite in matters of sentiment; and to live with a woman whose heart and faith were not all my own, would have been unutterably hateful to me. I jumped at no conclusions. I did not suffer my thoughts to condemn you unheard. But you had been living under my roof in secret correspondence with a man who called himself my friend. What could I do? Could I come to you and say, ‘Please do not receive any more secret letters from Desmond; that is a kind of thing which I object to?’ You would of course have promised to oblige me, and Desmond would have addressed his letters to another office. Having deceived me once, you see, I could hardly hope you would not deceive me again. That sort of thing grows upon one. On the other hand, why should I make a foolish scandal, read Desmond’s letters,--which would have been an ungentlemanly thing to do,--subpœna your maid, your footman, make myself ridiculous, and humiliate you, for the profit of lawyers and the amusement of newspaper readers; and failing in convicting you of the last and worst of infamies, take you back to my home and heart a spotless wife? It seemed to me that there could be no course for us but a tranquil and polite separation.” “If you had read the letters you might have thought differently.”