“You have not forgotten the hour of our separation, Harriet! You cannot have obliterated from your memory my agonies, on trusting to the winds and waves my wife, my hopes, my all! You cannot have forgotten my vows of love, of fidelity, of truth. What must have been the artifices, the machinations employed to beguile you of your confidence in Charles Duncan! But have I not before me an evidence of that subtle mischief which man, when lost to all that is manly, can effect? Was thy innocence a match for villany? Thy weakness an armour against cruelty? What have not been the means employed to ruin _thee_ as well as myself! Oh Being of infinite justice! to thee do I look up for a solution of all my doubts! Let me still hold fast my only consolation; my Harriet, my wife stands blameless in thy sight, and in my bosom. She is still cherished as the faithful, but deluded, perhaps fatally deluded, victim of baseness and cruelty. “Again farewell!” This letter had evidently been written after my alarm in the avenue by the wretched writer’s sudden disappearance. His narrative was detached from it, and bore several dates, as will appear; may heaven in its mercy lend a portion of its never-failing compassion to those to whom the miserable Harriet now consigns it! May they pause from time to time, and contemplate the _noble ruin_ thus exhibited to their view! For Maclairn’s justice will acknowledge it to be _such_; and he will applaud the woman, who, although shrinking from the consciousness of guilt, dares to avow her veneration, and love for virtue. She must indeed be sunk, who could erase from her memory a man like _Charles Duncan_; and Maclairn will understand and fret, that the heart would be unworthy of his, which should not have room for suffering and oppressed innocence, and a memory faithful in its tribute of sorrow and sympathy, gratitude and admiration, for a man, who not only loved her, but also her fame, better than himself. Yes: he will acknowledge that his Harriet, even in these tears, which she gives to suffering and departed worth—but let me hasten to the conclusion of a task which duty prescribes, before my sinking spirits faint. CHAP. IV. _Charles Duncan’s Narrative._ _London._