In the first p lace, he is aware that the circumstances under
which he has married are such as to give me the right of regarding him
with a just indignation. In the second place, he knows that my faithful
services, rendered through a period of twenty years, to his father and
to himself, forbid him, in common decency, to cast me out helpless on
the world without a provision for the end of my life. He is the meanest
of living men, and his wife is the vilest of living women. As long as
he can avoid fulfilling his obligations to me, he will; and his wife's
encouragement may be trusted to fortify him in his ingratitude.
"My object in determining to find him out is briefly this. His marriage
has exposed him to consequences which a man of ten times his courage
could not face without shrinking. Of those consequences he knows
nothing. His wife knows, and keeps him in ignorance. I know, and can
enlighten him. His security from the danger that threatens him is in
my hands alone; and he shall pay the price of his rescue to the last
farthing of the debt that justice claims for me as my due--no more, and
no less.
"I have now laid my mind before you, as you told me, without reserve.
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