Page:Adventures of Rachel Cunningham.djvu/25

 took her to all the places of licentious resort, traveling through the several provinces in the most expensive and dashing style, living and every where revelling to the highest degree of luxurious profusion in the enjoyments of loose and lust-excited pleasures: intemperate marked the path of their proceeding shameless folly bore the torch of notoriety before them, and every place of their abiding witnessed the unblushing infamy of their modesty-abashing demeanour and glaring adulterous connection. Althoug [sic] Mr. L was so well and generally known, and heretofore respected, that he was almost every where met by some person or persons who recognized him and knew the station he held in society at an eminent merchant of worthy character and repute, and though the degrading hum of ridicule on his dotage buzzed in his ears the inaccuracy of his conduct, yet so infatuatedly linked in the chain of Rachel's allurements was he, that he openly braved all the attacks of censure without as well as of reflection within, and such was the force of the delusion which involved his adherence to her and enslaved his reason, that even her most gross and shameful improprieties, however offensive to common decency in their exposure, were in his eyes so many traits of her splendid accomplishments, wit, and superior mental qualities.

Thus better,—thus yoked in amorous bondage, and moved only by the leading-strings of her will, she continued still to hold him securely in her will, she continued still to hold him securely in her toils the slave of her caprice. At length he returned with her to the house, before-mentioned, in Franklin County Pa. and there, without even once visiting his own immediate home, he remained with her in still adulterous cohabitation.

In the course of that period of her husband's absence from Franklin County, Mrs. L had sustained her accouchement of the child with which she was enceinte before his departure, but which infant expired in a few minutes after its birth, probably from, as the professional gentleman who attended her declared his belief to be, the excessive mental agitation its mother had suffered during the time of bearing. Since she had lain in, Mrs. L had continued confined to her bed, in a very doubtful state of indisposition; of which,