Such was the man whom you had admitted to your confidence; whom you had adopted for your bosom friend. I knew your pretensions to religion, the stress which you laid upon piety as the basis of morals. I remembered your objections to Talbot on this score, not only as a husband, but as a friend. I could, therefore, only suppose that Colden had joined dissimulation to his other errors, and had gained and kept your good opinion by avowing sentiments which his heart secretly abhorred. I cannot describe to you, Jane, my alarms upon this discovery. That your cook had intended to poison you, the next meat which you should eat in your own house, would have alarmed me, I assure you, much less. The preservation of your virtue was unspeakably of more importance in my eyes than of your life. I wrote to you: and what was your reply? I could scarcely believe my senses. Every horrid foreboding realized! already such an adept in this accursed sophistry! the very cant of that detestable sect adopted! I had plumed myself upon your ignorance. He had taken advantage of that, I supposed, and had won your esteem by counterfeiting a moral and pious strain. To make you put him forever at a distance, it was needed only to tear off his mask. This was done, but, alas, too late for your safety. The poison was already swallowed. I had no patience with you, to listen to your trifling and insidious distinctions,--such as, though you could audaciously urge them to me, possessed no weight, _could_ possess no weight, in your understanding. What was it to me whether he was ruffian or madman? whether, in destroying you, he meant to destroy or to save? Is it proper to expose your breast to a sword, because the wretch that wields it supposes madly that it is a straw which he holds in his hand? But I will not renew the subject. The same motives that induced me to attempt to reason with you then no longer exist. The anguish, the astonishment, which your letters, as they gradually unfolded your character, produced in me, I endeavoured to show you at the time. Now I pass them over to come to a more important circumstance. Yet how shall I tell it thee, Jane? I am afraid to intrust it to paper. Thy fame is still dear to me. I would not be the means of irretrievably blasting thy fame. Yet what may come of relating some incidents on paper? Faint is my hope, but I am not without some hope, that thou canst yet be saved, be snatched from perdition. Thy life I value not, in comparison with something higher. And if, through an erring sensibility, the sacrifice of Colden cost thee thy life, I shall yet rejoice. As the wife of Colden thou wilt be worse than dead to me. What has come to me, I wonder? I began this letter with a firm, and, as I thought, inflexible, soul. Despair had made me serene; yet now thy image rises before me with all those bewitching graces which adorned thee when thou wast innocent and a child. All the mother seizes my heart, and my tears suffocate me.