With
agony I allude to the incident that dispelled the rapture of
this vision. Sufficient for me most solemnly to assure you that
four-and-twenty hours had not elapsed without that feeble and
unhallowed tie being severed for ever! It vanished instantaneously
before the presence of my wife and my child. However you decide, it
can never again subsist: its utter and eternal dissolution was the
inevitable homage to your purity.
'Whatever may have been my errors, whatever my crimes, for I will not
attempt to justify to you a single circumstance of my life, I humble
myself in the dust before you, and solicit only mercy; yet whatever
may have been my career, ah! Annabel, in the infinite softness of your
soul was it not for a moment pardoned? Am I indeed to suffer for that
last lamentable intrusion? You are a woman, Annabel, with a brain as
clear as your heart is pure. Judge me with calmness, Annabel; were
there no circumstances in my situation to extenuate that deplorable
connection? I will not urge them; I will not even intimate them; but
surely, Annabel, when I kneel before you full of deep repentance and
long remorse, if you could pardon the past, it is not that incident,
however mortifying to you, however disgraceful to myself, that should
be an impassable barrier to all my hopes!
'Once you loved me; I ask you not to love me now.
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