The startling effrontery of the proposal provoked Roswell, and he told her that so far as a separation from himself was concerned she should be gratified to her heart’s content, and that while she remained as she was he would not divulge the marriage, but he warned her that if she should attempt marriage with another he would publish the marriage at Putney in every parish church and newspaper in New England.

At this point the private interview was interrupted by the hasty entrance of Mistress Susanna, who advanced in great agitation, as the pleadings inform us, and said to Roswell: 

“Mister Field, why can’t you give up that stiffiket” (meaning, as he supposed, certificate) “and let things be as if they had never been?”

Thereupon “Mister Field” proceeded to point out to the entire family of Mary Almira, which had assembled from the doors and keyholes where they had been eavesdropping, “the wickedness and folly of Mistress Susanna’s request.”  One of Mary’s brothers admitted that Roswell’s refusal “to connive to the dishonor of his wife” was correct and honorable, and that he should not be asked to make any such arrangement.

Roswell was greatly shocked and disgusted at the appearance, language, and manner of Mary Almira, and he was borne out in his impression of her character by the admission of one brother that she was “a giddy, inconsistent, unprincipled girl,” and by that of another that “she was a volatile coquette, who did not know her own mind from day to day.”

Roswell remained in Windsor three days, but did not again see Mary Almira; whereupon, feeling that nothing was to be gained by exposing “himself to renewed insults, he returned home for a few days.”

It appears that all this time Jeremiah was lurking in the vicinity, holding secret interviews with Mary and her family, and “devising ways and means” for the bigamous marriage which, according to the belief of Roswell, was performed between Jeremiah and Mary Almira somewhere in New Hampshire between the 14th and 27th of November.  Roswell M. Field never recognized the legality of any such ceremony or that Mary and Jeremiah had the lawful right to intermarry while the marriage at Putney remained in full force and effect.  He had reason to be thankful for his escape from a union for life with a woman of such frivolous nature and easy indifference to the most sacred obligations of human and divine law.  But he would not permit himself to become a silent copartner in what, to his strict notion of the inviolability of the marriage contract, was one of the most heinous crimes against society and morals.  He, therefore, took every means in his power to bring obloquy and punishment upon the guilty parties.  He instituted various proceedings at law to test the validity of the marriage at Putney.  He, among other measures, filed a petition in the Probate Court to secure an accounting from Mistress Susanna as guardian of the estate of his wife Mary Almira.  But Susanna avoided the issue by a technical plea.