“In replying to the letter I received from you on Monday last, I confined myself to an answer to the questions you therein ask me; for inasmuch as you said you were content that the past should remain in silence, and as I was myself unwilling to revive any subject of dispute between us, I passed over the harsh and new accusations contained in your letter; but on reading and weighing it carefully, as I have done since, I fear that my silence would be construed into an implied assent to those accusations. After your repeated assurances to me prior to our separation, and to others since then, of your conviction that there had been nothing criminal on my part, I am pained that you should have been persuaded to use such language to me. You know as well as I do that there has been nothing in my conduct to justify those gross and unexpected charges, and I cannot think why you should now seem to consider a foolish and anonymous letter as an evidence of guilt, never before having thought so, unless you have ulterior views, and seek to found some grounds on this for divorce. If this be your object, it could be more easily, not to say more generously, obtained. I repeatedly told you that if a divorce would make you happy, I was willing to go out of this State with you to obtain it, and that at any future time my promise to this effect would hold good. You said such was not your wish, and that we needed no court of law to decide our future position for us. From the time you proposed our separation, I used no remonstrance, save to implore you to weigh the matter seriously, and be sure, before you decided, that such a step would make you happy; you said it would, and to conduce as much as lay in my power to that happiness, was my only aim and employment until the day you took me from my home. Of my own desolate and prospectless future I scarcely dared to think or speak to you, but once you said that if any one dared to cast an imputation on me, not consistent with honor, I should call on you to defend me. That you should, therefore, now write and speak as you do, I can only impute to your yielding to the suggestions of those who, under the garb of friendship, are daring to interfere between us; but it is not in their power to know whether your happiness will be insured by endeavoring to work my utter ruin. I cannot believe it, and implore you, Edwin, for God’s sake, to trust to your own better judgment; and, as I am certain that your heart will tell you I could not seek to injure you, so likewise I am sure your future will not be brighter if you succeed in crushing me more completely, in casting disgrace upon one who has known no higher pride than the right of calling herself your wife. “CATHARINE N. FORREST.” To this Forrest replied thus: