SIR,--I find myself compelled to ask that you consider your
acquaintanceship with my wife at an end. Doubtless this request will
give you more relief than surprise. The visible waste of your frame
and the loss of her exquisite bloom are proof enough that both you
and she have long been in daily dread of a far worse visitation.
It is not worse, because I know how sentimental your impotent and
conscience-plagued interchanges of affection have been. I shall permit
and assist you to keep this matter a secret. To let it be known would
instantly wreck your own career, and would blast at a breath the
fortunes of our church and of every one of both our kindreds. I will
therefore not at this time require you to resign your church office or
to break off those business intimacies with me which, though no longer
founded in personal esteem, are vital to interests that common decency
must move you to shield from new peril.
I ask for no repair of the inextinguishable wrong you have done me.
I only ask you not to fancy that I am to be beguiled by arguments or
denials or moved by threats, or that one word I here write is founded
on conjecture or inference. Grovelling at my feet, in sobs of shame
and with prayers for pardon, Isabel has told me all. Has told me all,
Leonard Byington, my once trusted friend. Now, though prostrated on
her bed, she rejoices in the double forgiveness of her husband and
her priest, blessing him for deliverance from the misleadings of one
who--great God! must I write it?--might at last have dragged her into
crime. It is her request, as it is my command, that you darken our
threshold no more, and that as far as practicable you keep yourself
from her sight.
Faithfully,