Secrets to men of jealous minds convey’d
Have many a noble house in ruins laid;
Anna, I trust, although with wrongs beset,
And urged by want, I shall be faithful yet;
But what temptation may from these arrive,
To take a slighted woman by surprise,
Becomes a subject for your serious care —
For who offends, must for offence prepare.” 
   Perplex’d, dismay’d, the Wife foresaw her doom;
A day deferr’d was yet a day to come;
But still, though painful her suspended state,
She dreaded more the crisis of her fate;
Better to die than Stafford’s scorn to meet,
And her strange friend perhaps would be discreet. 
Presents she sent, and made a strong appeal
To woman’s feelings, begging her to feel;
With too much force she wrote of jealous men,
And her tears falling spoke beyond the pen;
Eliza’s silence she again implored,
And promised all that prudence could afford. 
   For looks composed and careless Anna tried;
She seem’d in trouble, and unconscious sigh’d: 
The faithful Husband, who devoutly loved
His silent partner, with concern reproved: 
“What secret sorrows on my Anna press,
That love may not partake, nor care redress?”
“None, none,” she answer’d, with a look so kind
That the fond man determined to be blind. 
   A few succeeding weeks of brief repose
In Anna’s cheek revived the faded rose;
A hue like this the western sky displays,
That glows awhile, and withers as we gaze. 
   Again the Friend’s tormenting letter came —
“The wants she suffer’d were affection’s shame;
She with her child a life of terrors led,
Unhappy fruit, but of a lawful bed: 
Her friend was tasting every bliss in life,
The joyful mother, and the wealthy wife;
While she was placed in doubt, in fear, in want,
To starve on trifles that the happy grant;
Poorly for all her faithful silence paid,
And tantalized by ineffectual aid: 
She could not thus a beggar’s lot endure;
She wanted something permanent and sure: 
If they were friends, then equal be their lot,
And she were free to speak if they were not.” 
   Despair and terror seized the Wife, to find
The artful workings of a vulgar mind: 
Money she had not, but the hint of dress
Taught her new bribes, new terrors to redress;
She with such feeling then described her woes
That envy’s self might on the view repose;
Then to a mother’s pains she made appeal,
And painted grief like one compell’d to feel. 
Yes! so she felt, that in her air, her face,
In every purpose, and in every place,
In her slow motion, in her languid mien,
The grief, the sickness of her soul, was seen. 
   Of some mysterious ill, the Husband sure,
Desired to trace it, for he hoped to cure;
Something he knew obscurely, and had seen
His wife attend a cottage on the green;
Love, loth to wound, endured conjecture long,
Till fear would speak, and spoke in language strong.