It is not a giddy girl who is writing to you. It is a woman who has learned to look upon things with fair judgment, notwithstanding that she has suffered deeply from a cruel wrong inflicted upon her. When you first came to me I was a child almost in years. I had had no opportunity of knowing the world, or of gaining that experience which is necessary to those who move in its busy quarters. I had never known trouble or sorrow, and, until my father fell into misfortune, I had lived very happily with him. He had his faults, I do not doubt, as we all have; but he was a good father to the last, and I loved him to the last. You judged him harshly, I know, and made no excuses for him--but it is in your nature to judge harshly. Weak as he was to some extent, I do not believe that he would have wronged his wife--doubly wronged her--and then have deserted her: as you wronged and deserted me. I have some remembrance of my mother, who died when I was very young, and I know that he was indulgent and good to her. I fancy I can see a hard look on your face at the word indulgent. But some natures require indulgence, and are the better and the happier for it. You were for a time indulgent to me, and it was for this, as well as for other qualities in you upon which I placed higher value than you deserved, that I loved you. Yes, I loved you. I scarcely know whether you ever believed I did; for, thinking over matters since our separation, I have arrived--whether rightly or wrongly--at what I believe to be a correct estimate of your character, at what assuredly is a correct estimate if you are destined to read it. I see you, hard and intolerant; doubtful of goodness in others; prone to place the most uncharitable construction on the actions of others. Lightness of heart is in your eyes a sign of levity. Surely the moods which were familiar to me in the first days of our acquaintanceship, and in the first few months of our wedded life, must have been foreign to your nature. I see something more in you. I see you false to your wife and to your marriage vows. I see you, who prided yourself upon your sense of justice, most unjust and ungenerous to me. Let your heart answer if I am wrong.