This answer, though, at the moment, highly irritating to Mary, was not the ultimate close of the affair.  Mr. Christie was connected in business with Mr. Imlay, at the same time that the house of Mr. Christie was the only one at which Mary habitually visited.  The consequence of this was, that, when Mr. Imlay had been already more than a fortnight in town, Mary called at Mr. Christie’s one evening, at a time when Mr. Imlay was in the parlour.  The room was full of company.  Mrs. Christie heard Mary’s voice in the passage, and hastened to her, to intreat her not to make her appearance.  Mary however was not to be controlled.  She thought, as she afterwards told me, that it was not consistent with conscious rectitude, that she should shrink, as if abashed, from the presence of one by whom she deemed herself injured.  Her child was with her.  She entered; and, in a firm manner, immediately led up the child, now near two years of age, to the knees of its father.  He retired with Mary into another apartment, and promised to dine with her at her lodging, I believe, the next day.

In the interview which took place in consequence of this appointment, he expressed himself to her in friendly terms, and in a manner calculated to sooth her despair.  Though he could conduct himself, when absent from her, in a way which she censured as unfeeling; this species of sternness constantly expired when he came into her presence.  Mary was prepared at this moment to catch at every phantom of happiness; and the gentleness of his carriage, was to her as a sun-beam, awakening the hope of returning day.  For an instant she gave herself up to delusive visions; and, even after the period of delirium expired, she still dwelt, with an aching eye, upon the air-built and unsubstantial prospect of a reconciliation.

At his particular request, she retained the name of Imlay, which, a short time before, he had seemed to dispute with her.  “It was not,” as she expresses herself in a letter to a friend, “for the world that she did so—­not in the least—­but she was unwilling to cut the Gordian knot, or tear herself away in appearance, when she could not in reality”.

The day after this interview, she set out upon a visit to the country, where she spent nearly the whole of the month of March.  It was, I believe, while she was upon this visit, that some epistolary communication with Mr. Imlay, induced her resolutely to expel from her mind, all remaining doubt as to the issue of the affair.

Mary was now aware that every demand of forbearance towards him, of duty to her child, and even of indulgence to her own deep-rooted predilection, was discharged.  She determined to rouse herself, and cast off for ever an attachment, which to her had been a spring of inexhaustible bitterness.  Her present residence among the scenes of nature, was favourable to this purpose.  She was at the house of an old and intimate friend, a lady of the name of Cotton, whose partiality