you account for it, except on the admission of my worst doubts
concerning her? Oh God! can I bear after all to think of her so, or
that I am scorned and made a sport of by the creature to whom I had
given my whole heart? Thus has it been with me all my life; and so will
it be to the end of it!--If you should learn anything, good or bad, tell
me, I conjure you: I can bear anything but this cruel suspense. If I
knew she was a mere abandoned creature, I should try to forget her; but
till I do know this, nothing can tear me from her, I have drank in
poison from her lips too long--alas! mine do not poison again. I sit
and indulge my grief by the hour together; my weakness grows upon me;
and I have no hope left, unless I could lose my senses quite. Do you
know I think I should like this? To forget, ah! to forget--there would
be something in that--to change to an idiot for some few years, and then
to wake up a poor wretched old man, to recollect my misery as past, and
die! Yet, oh! with her, only a little while ago, I had different hopes,
forfeited for nothing that I know of! * * * * * * If you can give me any
consolation on the subject of my tormentor, pray do. The pain I suffer
wears me out daily. I write this on the supposition that Mrs. ----- may
still come here, and that I may be detained some weeks longer. Direct
to me at the Post-office; and if I return to town directly as I fear, I
will leave word for them to forward the letter to me in London--not at
my old lodgings. I will not go back there: yet how can I breathe away
from her? Her hatred of me must be great, since my love of her could
not overcome it! I have finished the book of my conversations with her,
which I told you of: if I am not mistaken, you will think it very nice
reading.

Yours ever.

Have you read Sardanapalus? How like the little Greek slave, Myrrha, is