And will it be always thus, my dear friend? Will thy love screen me forever from remorse? will my mother's reproaches never intrude amidst the raptures of fondness and poison my tranquillity? What will she say when she discovers the truth? My conscience will not allow me to dissemble. It will not disavow the name or withhold the duties of a wife. Too well do I conceive what she will say,--_how_ she will act. I need not apprehend expulsion from her house. Exile will be a voluntary act:--"You shall eat, drink, lodge, and dress as well as ever. I will not sever husband from wife, and I find no pleasure in seeing those whom I most hate perishing with want. I threatened to abandon you, merely because I would employ _every_ means of preventing your destruction; but my revenge is not so sordid as to multiply unnecessary evils on your head. I shall take from you nothing but my esteem,--my affection,--my society. I shall never see you but with agony; I shall never think of you without pain. I part with you forever, and prepare myself for that grave which your folly and ingratitude have dug for me. "You have said, Jane, that, having lost my favour, you will never live upon my bounty. That will be an act of needless and perverse cruelty in you. It will be wantonly adding to that weight with which you have already sunk me to the grave. Besides, I will not leave you an option. While I live, my watchful care shall screen you from penury in spite of yourself. When I die, my testament shall make you my sole successor. What I have shall be yours,--at least, while _you_ live. "I have deeply regretted the folly of threatening you with loss of property. I should have known you better than to think that a romantic head like yours would find any thing formidable in such deprivations. If other considerations were feeble, this would be chimerical. "Fare you well, Jane, and, when you become a mother, may your tenderness never be requited by the folly and ingratitude which it has been my lot to meet with in the child of my affections!" Something like this has my mother already said to me, in the course of an affecting conversation, in which I ventured to plead for you. And have I, then, resolved to trample on such goodness? Whither, my friend, shall I fly from a scene like this? Into thy arms? And shall I find comfort _there_? can I endure life, with the burden of remorse which generosity like this will lay upon me? But I tell you, Henry, I am resolved. I have nothing but evil to choose. There is but one calamity greater than my mother's anger. I cannot mangle my own vitals. I cannot put an impious and violent end to my own life. Will it be mercy to make _her_ witness my death? and can I live without you? If I must be an ingrate, be her and not you the victim. If I must requite benevolence with malice and tenderness with hatred, be it _her_ benevolence and tenderness, and not _yours_, that are thus requited.