Then I had sometimes better and sometimes worse prospects before me.  My worst would only have troubled you to know:  my better made me frequently hope, that, by the next post, or the next, and so on for weeks, I should have the best news to impart to you that then could happen:  cold as the wretch had made my heart to that best.—­For how could I think to write to you, with a confession that I was not married, yet lived in the house (for I could not help it) with such a man?—­Who likewise had given it out to several, that we were actually married, although with restrictions that depended on the reconciliation with my friends?  And to disguise the truth, or be guilty of a falsehood, either direct or equivocal, that was what you had never taught me.

But I might have written to you for advice, in my precarious situation, perhaps you will think.  But, indeed, my dear Mrs. Norton, I was not lost for want of advice.  And this will appear clear to you from what I have already hinted, were I to explain myself no further:—­For what need had the cruel spoiler to have recourse to unprecedented arts—­I will speak out plainer still, (but you must not at present report it,) to stupifying potions, and to the most brutal and outrageous force, had I been wanting in my duty?

A few words more upon this grievous subject—­

When I reflect upon all that has happened to me, it is apparent, that this generally-supposed thoughtless seducer has acted by me upon a regular and preconcerted plan of villany.

In order to set all his vile plots in motion, nothing was wanting, from the first, but to prevail upon me, either by force or fraud, to throw myself into his power:  and when this was effected, nothing less than the intervention of the paternal authority, (which I had not deserved to be exerted in my behalf,) could have saved me from the effect of his deep machinations.  Opposition from any other quarter would but too probably have precipitated his barbarous and ungrateful violence:  and had you yourself been with me, I have reason now to think, that somehow or other you would have suffered in endeavouring to save me:  for never was there, as now I see, a plan of wickedness more steadily and uniformly pursued than his has been, against an unhappy creature who merited better of him:  but the Almighty has thought fit, according to the general course of His providence, to make the fault bring on its own punishment:  but surely not in consequence of my father’s dreadful imprecation, ’That I might be punished here,’ [O my mamma Norton, pray with me, if so, that here it stop!] ‘by the very wretch in whom I had placed my wicked confidence!’

I am sorry, for your sake, to leave off so heavily.  Yet the rest must be brief.

Let me desire you to be secret in what I have communicated to you; at least till you have my consent to divulge it.

God preserve to you your more faultless child!