be saved, be snatched from perdition. Thy life I value not, in comparison
with something higher. And if, through an erring sensibility, the
sacrifice of Colden cost thee thy life, I shall yet rejoice. As the wife
of Colden thou wilt be worse than dead to me.

What has come to me, I wonder? I began this letter with a firm, and, as
I thought, inflexible, soul. Despair had made me serene; yet now thy image
rises before me with all those bewitching graces which adorned thee when
thou wast innocent and a child. All the mother seizes my heart, and my
tears suffocate me.

Shall I shock, shall I wound thee, my child, by lifting the veil from
thy misconduct, behind which thou thinkest thou art screened from every
human eye? How little dost thou imagine that I know _so much_!

Now will thy expostulations and reasonings have an end. Surely they
_will_ have an end. Shame at last, shame at last, will overwhelm thee
and make thee dumb.

Yet my heart sorely misgives me. I shudder at the extremes to which thy
accursed seducer may have urged thee. What thou hast failed in concealing
thou mayest be so obdurately wicked as to attempt to justify.

Was it not the unavoidable result of confiding in a man avowedly
irreligious and immoral; of exposing thy understanding and thy heart to
such stratagems as his philosophy made laudable and necessary? But I know
not what I would say. I must lay down the pen till I can reason myself
into some composure. I will write again to-morrow.

H. FIELDER.