Notwithstanding all this excellence, Abstemia has the misfortune to incur the unmerited jealousy of her husband.  Instead, however, of resenting his harsh treatment with clamorous upbraidings, and with the stormy violence of high, windy virtue, by which the sparks of anger are so often blown into a flame, she endures it with the meekness of conscious, but patient, virtue; and makes the following beautiful appeal to a friend who has witnessed her long suffering: 

------Hast thou not seen me
Bear all his injuries, as the ocean suffers
The angry bark to plough through her bosom,
And yet is presently so smooth, the eye
Cannot perceive where the wide wound was made?

Lorenzo, being wrought on by false representations, at length repudiates her.  To the last, however, she maintains her patient sweetness, and her love for him, in spite of his cruelty.  She deplores his error, even more than his unkindness; and laments the delusion which has turned his very affection into a source of bitterness.  There is a moving pathos in her parting address to Lorenzo, after their divorce: 

------Farewell, Lorenzo,
Whom my soul doth love:  if you e’er marry,
May you meet a good wife; so good, that you
May not suspect her, nor may she be worthy
Of your suspicion; and if you hear hereafter
That I am dead, inquire but my last words,
And you shall know that to the last I lov’d you. 
And when you walk forth with your second choice
Into the pleasant fields, and by chance talk of me,
Imagine that you see me, lean and pale,
Strewing your path with flowers.—­
But may she never live to pay my debts:  (weeps)
If but in thought she wrong you, may she die
In the conception of the injury. 
Pray make me wealthy with one kiss:  farewell, sir: 
Let it not grieve you when you shall remember
That I was innocent:  nor this forget,
Though innocence here suffer, sigh, and groan,
She walks but thorow thorns to find a throne.

In a short time Lorenzo discovers his error, and the innocence of his injured wife.  In the transports of his repentance, he calls to mind all her feminine excellence; her gentle, uncomplaining, womanly fortitude under wrongs and sorrows: 

------Oh, Abstemia! 
How lovely thou lookest now! now thou appearest
Chaster than is the morning’s modesty
That rises with a blush, over whose bosom
The western wind creeps softly; now I remember
How, when she sat at table, her obedient eye
Would dwell on mine, as if it were not well,
Unless it look’d where I look’d:  oh how proud
She was, when she could cross herself to please me! 
But where now is this fair soul?  Like a silver cloud
She hath wept herself, I fear, into the dead sea. 
And will be found no more.

It is but doing right by the reader, if interested in the fate of Abstemia by the preceding extracts, to say, that she was restored to the arms and affections of her husband, rendered fonder than ever, by that disposition in every good heart, to atone for past injustice, by an overflowing measure of returning kindness: