Nothing short of cruelty would have driven me to this. I could have
borne my doom in silence had I been left unmolested; but he tortures
me, and I shall soon be in the grave if I cannot escape.'
To his shocked inquiry how her husband tortured her, the Duchess
said that it was by jealousy. 'He tries to wring admissions from me
concerning you,' she said, 'and will not believe that I have not
communicated with you since my engagement to him was settled by my
father, and I was forced to agree to it.'
The poor curate said that this was the heaviest news of all. 'He
has not personally ill-used you?' he asked.
'Yes,' she whispered.
'What has he done?'
She looked fearfully around, and said, sobbing: 'In trying to make
me confess to what I have never done, he adopts plans I dare not
describe for terrifying me into a weak state, so that I may own to
anything! I resolved to write to you, as I had no other friend.'
She added, with dreary irony, 'I thought I would give him some
ground for his suspicion, so as not to disgrace his judgment.'
'Do you really mean, Emmeline,' he tremblingly inquired, 'that you--
that you want to fly with me?'
'Can you think that I would act otherwise than in earnest at such a
time as this?'
He was silent for a minute or more. 'You must not go with me,' he
said.
'Why?'
'It would be sin.'
'It CANNOT be sin, for I have never wanted to commit sin in my life;
and it isn't likely I would begin now, when I pray every day to die
and be sent to Heaven out of my misery!'
'But it is wrong, Emmeline, all the same.
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