Mr. Timothy Shelley appeared on the scene, and, his feelings as
a Christian and a father deeply outraged, did the worst thing
he could possibly have done--he made forgiveness conditional on
his son's giving up his friend. The next step was to cut off
supplies and to forbid Field Place to him, lest he should
corrupt his sisters' minds. Soon Hogg had to go to York to
work in a conveyancer's office, and Shelley was left alone in
London, depressed, a martyr, and determined to save others from
similar persecution. In this mood he formed a connection
destined to end in tragedy. His sisters were at a school at
Clapham, where among the girls was one Harriet Westbrook, the
sixteen-year-old daughter of a coffee-house keeper. Shelley
became intimate with the Westbrooks, and set about saving the
soul of Harriet, who had a pretty rosy face, a neat figure, and
a glib school-girl mind quick to catch up and reproduce his
doctrines. The child seems to have been innocent enough, but
her elder sister, Eliza, a vulgar woman of thirty, used her as
a bait to entangle the future baronet; she played on Shelley's
feelings by encouraging Harriet to believe herself the victim
of tyranny at school. Still, it was six months before he took
the final step. How he could save Harriet from scholastic and
domestic bigotry was a grave question. In the first place,
hatred of "matrimonialism" was one of his principles, yet it
seemed unfair to drag a helpless woman into the risks of
illicit union; in the second place, he was at this time
passionately interested in another woman, a certain Miss
Hitchener, a Sussex school mistress of republican and deistic
principles, whom he idealised as an angel, only to discover
soon, with equal falsity, that she was a demon. At last
Harriet was worked up to throw herself on his protection. They