Your beloved's honour is inviolate!--Must be inviolate! and will be so,
in spite of men and devils. Could I have had hope of a reconciliation,
all my view was, that she should not have had this man.--All that can be
said now, is, she must run the risk of a bad husband: she of whom no man
living is worthy!
You pity her mother--so do not I! I pity no mother that puts it out of
her power to show maternal love, and humanity, in order to patch up for
herself a precarious and sorry quiet, which every blast of wind shall
disturb.
I hate tyrants in ever form and shape: but paternal and maternal tyrants
are the worst of all: for they can have no bowels.
I repeat, that I pity none of them. Our beloved friend only deserves
pity. She had never been in the hands of this man, but for them. She is
quite blameless. You don't know all her story. Were I to tell you that
she had no intention to go off with this man, it would avail her nothing.
It would only deserve to condemn, with those who drove her to
extremities, him who now must be her refuge. I am
Your sincere friend and servant,
ANNA HOWE.