“I am composed, my Harriet. I have seen thee, I have heard thy gentle voice! listened, in breathless silence, to the pure effusions of thy spotless mind; heard my Harriet, my wife, my _all_ that Heaven has given me! speak to _her son_, praise his filial duty to _his father_; heard that that parent had been _smitten_, stricken by the hand of adversity! Heard her call him, “her dear _Maclairn_,” her helpless, her unfortunate husband! Was this the language to heal my broken spirit? No: but it was that which has fettered every tumultuous passion of my soul! I would not for worlds speak to you, Harriet; I would not for worlds approach you! No: I would refuse your offered love! What! brand with infamy thy spotless name! Sink the honourable wife, the virtuous mother to be the sharer of my wretched condition! The companion of a reputed robber, a worthless vagabond; of a being who can claim no affinity but to the earth he treads! No; Harriet, thy Duncan is not yet so poor, so abject! Scorned, and sunk as he may be in your eyes, he yet proudly maintains his claims to the recompense of long suffering and patience. This is not Duncan’s theatre of glory! But he has before him an inheritance, and a home; and he has only to press forward to attain it.” “The wife of Sir Murdoch Maclairn; the mother of his children; the prop and comfort of his life is in my eyes, encompassed by an host of angels. Shall the wretched Duncan invade the blessings of another? No, Harriet. He has beheld you for the last time. Live and die a suitable inhabitant for a better world! _Live_ to be reverenced by your children’s children! _Live_ to be called the Matron’s pride, and your sex’s boast. Only think of me, as a man who was once thy love; as one incapable of forgetting you. Think of me as one, who would sooner have been what he has been cruelly believed to be, than have basely left thee to the tortures of doubt and suspense, and abandoned to an insulting world. Think of me only as an unfortunate man, as one whom you _may_ pity, as one who will soon be removed: as one whose heart—— “Again I take up my pen. Again the tumult of my senses is calmed. I can now weep. I can thank God that your brother is absent. I can pray, my Harriet! I can see the God of mercy allaying the storm, and smoothing my passage to himself. _Farewell_: I have only to see, that you are in possession of my justification; and then shall seas again separate us, whilst my soul still fondly clings to thee. Farewell! Farewell! “CHARLES DUNCAN.”