Yet he declared, although now that it was all
over he avowed his joy at the interposition of his destiny, and the
opportunity which he at length possessed of pursuing the career for
which he was adapted, that he had to his knowledge given his wife
no cause of offence which could authorise her conduct. As for his
daughter, he said he should not be so cruel as to tear her from
her mother's breast; though, if anything could induce him to such
behaviour, it would be the malignant and ungenerous menace of his
wife's relatives, that they would oppose his preferred claim to
the guardianship of his child, on the plea of his immoral life and
atheistical opinions. With reference to pecuniary arrangements, as
his chief seat was entailed on male heirs, he proposed that his wife
should take up her abode at Cherbury, an estate which had been settled
on her and her children at her marriage, and which, therefore, would
descend to Venetia. Finally, he expressed his satisfaction that the
neighbourhood of Marringhurst would permit his good and still faithful
friend to cultivate the society and guard over the welfare of his wife
and daughter.
During the first ten years of Herbert's exile, for such indeed it
might be considered, the Doctor maintained with him a rare yet regular
correspondence; but after that time a public event occurred, and
a revolution took place in Herbert's life which terminated all
communication between them; a termination occasioned, however, by such
a simultaneous conviction of its absolute necessity, that it was not
attended by any of those painful communications which are too often
the harrowing forerunners of a formal disruption of ancient ties.
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