shutting their eyes, and pretending they took her for a married woman.

Observe the consequence of this! While she was, and constantly
professed to be, an unmarried mother; she was fit society for the
squeamish and the formal. The moment she acknowledged herself a wife,
and that by a marriage perhaps unexceptionable, the case was altered.
Mary and myself, ignorant as we were of these elevated refinements,
supposed that our marriage would place her upon a surer footing in the
calendar of polished society, than ever. But it forced these people to
see the truth, and to confess their belief of what they had carefully
been told; and this they could not forgive. Be it remarked, that the
date of our marriage had nothing to do with this, that question being
never once mentioned during this period. Mary indeed had, till now,
retained the name of Imlay which had first been assumed from necessity
in France; but its being retained thus long, was purely from the
aukwardness that attends the introduction of a change, and not from an
apprehension of consequences of this sort. Her scrupulous explicitness
as to the nature of her situation, surely sufficed to make the name she
bore perfectly immaterial.

It is impossible to relate the particulars of such a story, but in the
language of contempt and ridicule. A serious reflection however upon the
whole, ought to awaken emotions of a different sort. Mary retained the
most numerous portion of her acquaintance, and the majority of those
whom she principally valued. It was only the supporters and the subjects
of the unprincipled manners of a court, that she lost. This however is
immaterial. The tendency of the proceeding, strictly considered, and
uniformly acted upon, would have been to proscribe her from all valuable
society. And who was the person proscribed? The firmest champion, and,
as I strongly suspect, the greatest ornament her sex ever had to boast!