Page:English laws for women in the nineteenth century.djvu/104

92 not a man of honour; and seeing him shrink silently, unable to repel this insult; in the stinging, maddening thought of what the report of that morning's unexpected flood of slander would he to my sons; whose first information of it would probably be (as indeed it was), from the English newspapers; they being then at Naples—and in the knowledge of what it must be to all my own family, who had upheld me so earnestly through previous defamation and sorrow:—

In the regret (too late regret!) that I had not borrowed money from any friend who would lend it, to pay my creditors; and allowed Mr Norton to seize all he coveted; instead of believing that the fear of exposure would prevent his disputing the contract (as it prevented his disputing my petition under the Infant Custody Bill), and that at the eleventh hour he would decently pay what as a "Man of Honour" he was bound to pay—so that I should not have to come into Court at all:—

In the grating, hopeless knowledge, that every fraction of all he had ever said in his moods of desire for reconciliation, was false as the rest: and that there he sate, who had written me such caressing letters,—making notes of accusation; and repeating,—for the sake of money,—slanders he had solemnly declared he did not believe, sixteen years before:—

In the horrible gulf of difference, between reading the evidence of a drunken groom, in those vanished miserable times, and in hearing my own husband now echo that groom's voice;—seeing him cower, like that groom, before the proof of truth, and the jeers of the crowd;—knowing he yet hoped, like that groom, that his slander would be stronger than my struggle against it:—

In the bitter thought, that I might (the destiny is not so rare among women) I might have been married to some one with the heart of a man, and the mind of a gentleman, who would have loved and sheltered me;—or even if he had quarrelled with me, would have made warfare ;—instead