"You may conceive the mortification I endured in this sacrifice of pride
to prudence; but those were no ordinary motives which induced me to
submit to it. Fast approaching to the grave, it mattered to me but little
whether a violent death should shorten a life to which a limit was
already set, and which I was far from being anxious to retain: but I
could not endure the thought of bringing upon my mother and my sister the
wretchedness and shame which the mere suspicion of a crime so enormous
would occasion them; and when my eye caught all the circumstances arrayed
against me, my pride seemed to suffer a less mortification even in the
course I adopted than in the thought of the felon's gaol and the
criminal's trial,--the hoots and execrations of the mob, and the death
and ignominious remembrance of the murderer.

"Stronger than either of these motives was my shrinking and loathing
aversion to whatever seemed likely to unrip the secret history of the
past. I sickened at the thought of Gertrude's name and fate being bared
to the vulgar eye, and exposed to the comment, the strictures, the
ridicule of the gaping and curious public. It seemed to me, therefore,
but a very poor exertion of philosophy to conquer my feelings of
humiliation at Thornton's insolence and triumph, and to console myself
with the reflection that a few months must rid me alike of his exactions
and my life.

"But, of late, Thornton's persecutions and demands have risen to such a
height that I have been scarcely able to restrain my indignation and
control myself into compliance. The struggle is too powerful for my
frame: it is rapidly bringing on the fiercest and the last contest I
shall suffer, before 'the wicked shall cease from troubling, and the
weary be at rest.' Some days since I came to a resolution, which I am now
about to execute: it is to leave this country and take refuge on the