| | 1 | Author: | Moulton
Louise Chandler
1835-1908 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | My third book  | | | | Published: | 2003 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | “`Mr. Grant,—I have not been a good man. I
feel this now, lying here on my death-bed, and I confess
it to you the more readily because I do not believe
that at heart you are a one whit better one. I must
speak plainly and bluntly, for I have no time for circumlocution.
I have hardly strength enough left to
dictate this to Richard Huntley, my attorney. I have
made a brave effort to forgive every body; but it has
been the hardest of all to forgive you; for your harshness,
your sinful pride, killed my beautiful Margaret.
You never loved as I loved her—I, her lover, her husband.
There! you will start at that word, I foresee;
you will start again at the marriage certificate enfolded
in this letter. We were married secretly, as you will
perceive, while I was in your very neighborhood. I
bound Margaret, when I left her, by a solemn oath,
not to make it known until she had my permission.
She was a gentle crature, as no one knows better than
you, and never thought of disputing the will of any
one she loved. My father was dead. I was dependent
for all my hopes of future fortune and support on
my mother, a very proud, resolute woman. She had
a grand match in contemplation for me at that time.
I knew it would be no easy matter to reconcile her to
its failure, and if she should know just then that I had
married as she would have thought so far below me,
much as she loved me she would have cast me off forever.
This, to a true man, would have been no great
matter compared with causing Margaret one hour of
trouble, one agony of humiliation. But I was not a
true man. I was helpless and imbecile, for I had never
been brought up to depend on myself. But I must
hasten, for my strength is failing me. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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