Page:English laws for women in the nineteenth century.djvu/62

50 chambers of his solicitor, or not at all; but I say it is not ''that the father of those children should force me, their mother, out of the very tenderness I bear them, to visit them at the chambers of the attorney who collected the evidence, examined the witnesses, and conducted the proceedings for the intended divorce. I say it is not decent—nay, that even if I were guilty, it would not be decent to make me such a proposal. But I am innocent.—I have been pronounced innocent by a jury of my countrymen—I have been solemnly and publicly declared innocent by the nobleman against whom that ill-advised action was brought. Why, then, are my children kept from me?—from me whom even their own witnesses proved to be a careful and devoted mothers' Mr Norton says, the Law gives him my children. I know it does, but the Law does no more; it does not compel me to endure more than separation from them; and sooner than allow them to connect my visits in their memory with secresy [sic] and shame, I would submit never again to behold them till they were of an age to visit me without asking permission of any human being''."

More than once, Mr Norton's advisers have shown more feeling for me than my husband himself; and on this occasion his solicitor wrote:— "Mr Norton has made the appointment to see the children here—I cannot but regret it."

Eventually, the children were permitted to come to my brother's house; Mr Norton expressly limiting the time of their stay to one half-hour, and sending them with two of the women who had been witnesses on the trial, who stated that their "orders" were to remain in the room with me. I was not allowed even to see my baby of two years old without these "witnesses."

What I suffered on my children's account, none will ever know or measure. "The heart knoweth its own bitterness," and God knew mine! The days and nights of tears and anguish, that grew into the struggle of years—it is even now