"On this letter she went; yet in innocence, for she took her child with her. Could any one doubt that she was betrayed, carried off, the victim of the foulest treachery? No one did doubt it. Police were sent from London, the country searched, the most minute inquiries set on foot. Sometimes it was supposed that a clew was found, but in the end all failed. Month after month passed; hope became despair; pity merged into surmise; and condemnation quickly followed. If she had been carried forcibly from her home, still she could not forever be imprisoned and debarred from all possibility at least of writing. She might have sent tidings from the ends of the earth, nay, it was madness to think that she could be carried far against her own will. In any town, in any village, she might appeal to the justice and humanity of her fellow-creatures, and be set free. She would not have remained with the man of violence who had torn her away, unless she had at last become a party in his act, and lost all right to return to her husband's roof.
"Such suspicions began to creep about--rather felt in men's minds than inferred in their speech--till her husband first, uttered the fatal word; and then, as if set free from a spell, each one was full of indignation at her dereliction and his injuries. Sir Boyvill was beyond all men vain--vanity rendered him liable to jealousy--and, when jealous, full of sore and angry feelings. His selfishness and unforgiving nature, which had been neutralized by his wife's virtues, now, quickened by the idea of her guilt, burst forth and engrossed every other emotion. He was injured there where the pride of man is most accessible--branded by pity--the tale of the world. He had feared such a catastrophe during the first years of his wedded life, being conscious of the difference which age and nature had placed between him and his wife. In the recesses of his heart he had felt deeply grateful to her for having dissipated these fears. From the moment that her prudent conduct had made him secure, he had become another man--as far as his defective nature and narrow mind permitted--he had grown virtuous and disinterested; but this fabric of good qualities was the result of her influence; and it was swept away and utterly erased from the moment she left him, and that love and esteem were exchanged for contempt and hatred.