This meant that she feared her husband was about to lose her. I put the
fear in the very form it took in that gentle breast.
Possessed with this dread, so natural to her situation, she set her
house in order, and left her little legacies of clothes and jewels,
without the help of a lawyer; for Sir Charles, she knew, would respect
her lightest wish.
To him she left her all, except these trifles, and, above all--a
manuscript book. It was the history of her wedded life. Not the bare
outward history; but such a record of a sensitive woman's heart as no
male writer's pen can approach.
It was the nature of her face and her tongue to conceal; but here, on
this paper, she laid bare her heart; here her very subtlety operated,
not to hide, but to dissect herself and her motives.
But oh, what it cost her to pen this faithful record of her love, her
trials, her doubts, her perplexities, her agonies, her temptations, and
her crime! Often she laid down the pen, and hid her face in her hands.
Often the scalding tears ran down that scarlet face. Often she writhed
at her desk, and wrote on, sighing and moaning. Yet she persevered to
the end. It was the grave that gave her the power. "When he reads
this," she said, "I shall be in my tomb. Men make excuses for the dead.
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