that in seeing her relations, she must discover his barbarous deceit) he thought it was best to be himself the relator of his villany; he fell upon his knees before her, with so much seeming confusion, distress and anguish, that she was at a loss to know what could mould his stubborn heart to such contrition.  At last, with a thousand well counterfeited tears, and sighs, he stabb’d her with the wounding relation of his wife’s being still alive; and with a hypocrite’s pangs conjured her to have some mercy on a lost man as he was, in an obstinate, inveterate passion, that had no alternative but death, or possession.

He urged, that could he have supported the pain of living without her, he never would have made himself so great a villain; but when the absolute question was, whether he should destroy himself, or betray her, self-love had turned the ballance, though not without that anguish to his soul, which had poisoned all his delights, and planted daggers to stab his peace.  That he had a thousand times started in his sleep with guilty apprehensions; the form of her honoured father perpetually haunting his troubled dreams, reproaching him as a traitor to that trust which in his departing moments he had reposed in him; representing to his tortured imagination the care he took of his education, more like a father than an uncle, with which he had rewarded him by effecting the perdition of his favourite daughter, who was the lovely image of his benefactor.

With this artful contrition he endeavoured to sooth his injured wife:  But what soothing could heal the wounds she had received?  Horror! amazement! sense of honour lost! the world’s opinion! ten thousand distresses crowded her distracted imagination, and she cast looks upon the conscious traitor with horrible dismay!  Her fortune was in his hands, the greatest part of which was already lavished away in the excesses of drinking and gaming.  She was young, unacquainted with the world; had never experienced necessity, and knew no arts of redressing it; so that thus forlorn and distressed, to whom could she run for refuge, even from want, and misery, but to the very traitor that had undone her.  She was acquainted with none that could or would espouse her cause, a helpless, useless load of grief and melancholy! with child! disgraced! her own relations either unable, or unwilling to relieve her.

Thus was she detained by unhappy circumstances, and his prevailing arts to wear away three wretched years with him, in the same house, though she most solemnly protests, and she has a right to be believed, that no persuasion could ever again reconcile her to his impious arms.  Whenever she cast her eyes upon her son, it gave a mortal wound to her peace:  The circumstances of his birth glared full on her imagination; she saw him, in future, upbraided with his father’s treachery, and his mother’s misfortunes.  Thus forsaken of all the world, in the very morning of her life, when all things should have been gay, and promising, she wore away three wretched years.  Mean time her betrayer had procured for himself a considerable employment; the duties of which obliged him to go into the country where his first wife lived.  He took leave of his injured innocent, with much seeming tenderness; and made the most sacred protestations, that he would not suffer her, nor her child ever to want.