Page:English laws for women in the nineteenth century.djvu/108

96 and cross-examined me, on topics which had nothing to do with the case, but which were to imply degradation and shame!

''Once for all, I did not part from, my husband on Lord Melbourne s account; nor had Lord Melbourne anything whatever to do with our quarrel. I parted from Mr Norton because I persisted in an intention to take my children to my brother's house, where my husband, on account of his own conduct, was not received. My husband sent my children to a woman with whom he was intimate, and who has since left him an estate in Yorkshire; and we separated upon that. I had no other ground of dispute with my husband. The slanders repecting [sic] Lord Melbourne were an afterthought.''

''So it was yesterday. Mr Norton did not make any such stipulation with me as he says he did. There was then no question of bequests from Lord Melbourne—for Lord Melbourne was not dead. Mr Norton broke his covenant, according to his own letter, because my mother left me an annuity. There is not a syllable in his letter of any other cause. He introduced Lord Melbourne's name yesterday to pain and insult me, and also to draw off public attention from, the fact of the positive fraud committed on my creditors by his withholding the sum due to than. The year after the action against Lord Melbourne, he besought my return home, and my forgiveness, in the most endearing terms. He threw the blame of the trial on Lord Grantley, Lord Wynford, and the political party to which they belonged. If he believed the slander, he was base to write caressing letters to persuade me to return to him; if (as is the fact) he did believe that slander, he is doubly base to invoke the name of the dead against the mother of his grown-up sons, in a public court, by way of excusing his violation of a solemn covenant.''

''All this, though it is life and death to me, may not interest the public. But what interest the public is the state of''