How you have shocked, confounded, surprised, astonished me, by your
dreadful communication!--My heart is too weak to bear up against such a
stroke as this!--When all hope was with me! When my prospects were so
much mended!--But can there be such villany in men, as in this vile
principal, and equally vile agent!
I am really ill--very ill--grief and surprise, and, now I will say,
despair, have overcome me!--All, all, you have laid down as conjecture,
appears to me now to be more than conjecture!
O that your mother would have the goodness to permit me the presence of
the only comforter that my afflicted, my half-broken heart, could be
raised by. But I charge you, think not of coming up without her
indulgent permission. I am too ill at present, my dear, to think of
combating with this dreadful man; and of flying from this horrid house!--
My bad writing will show you this.--But my illness will be my present
security, should he indeed have meditated villany.--Forgive, O forgive
me, my dearest friend, the trouble I have given you!--All must soon--But
why add I grief to grief, and trouble to trouble?--But I charge you, my
beloved creature, not to think of coming up without your mother's love,
to the truly desolate and broken-spirited