country, which was now at war with France. Alone at Neuilly, where she
had to seek shelter both for economy and safety, with no means of
returning to England, and unable to go to Switzerland through her
inability to procure a passport, her money dwindling, still she
managed to continue her literary work; and as well as some letters on
the subject of the Revolution, she wrote at Neuilly all that was ever
finished of her _Historical and Moral View of the French
Revolution_. Her only servant at this time was an old gardener, who
used to attend her on her rambles through the woods, and more than
once as far as Paris. On one of these occasions she was so sickened
with horror at the evidence of recent executions which she saw in the
streets that she began boldly denouncing the perpetrators of such
savagery, and had to be hurried away for her life by some sympathetic
onlookers. It was during this time of terror around and depression
within that Mary met Captain Gilbert Imlay, an American, at the house
of a mutual friend.

Now began the complication of reasons and deeds which caused bitter
grief in not only one generation. Mary was prompted by loneliness,
love, and danger on all hands. There was risk in proclaiming herself
an English subject by marriage, if indeed there was at the time the
possibility of such a marriage as would have been valid in England,
though, as the wife of an American citizen, she was safe. Thus, at a
time when all laws were defied, she took the fatal step of trusting in
Imlay's honour and constancy; and, confident of her own pure motives,
entered into a union which her letters to him, full of love,
tenderness, and fidelity, proved that she regarded as a sacred
marriage; all the circumstances, and, not least, the pathetic way she
writes to him of their child later on, prove how she only wished to
remain faithful to him. It was now that the sad experiences of her