Doubts--Summons

I sat brooding, with these documents open before me on the table,
when Kingsley tapped at the door. I bade him enter, and put the
papers in his hands. He read them in silence, laid them down without
a word, and looked me with a grave composure in the face.

"What do you think of it?" I demanded.

"That he speaks the truth," he replied.

"Yes, no doubt--so far as he himself is concerned."

"I should think it all true."

"Indeed! I think not."

"Why do you doubt, and what?"

"I doubt those portions in which he insists upon my wife's integrity."

"Wherefore?"

"There are many reasons; the principal of which is her singular
concealment of the truth. She suffers a strange man to offend her
virtue with the most atrocious familiarities, and says nothing to
her husband, who, alone, could have redressed the wrong and remedied
the impertinence."

"That certainly is a staggering fact."

"According to his own admission, she warns him to fly from the wrath
of her husband, to which his audacity had exposed him--warns him,
in her night-dress, and from the window of her chamber."

"True, true! I had forgotten that."

"Look at all the circumstances. He haunts the house--according
to his own showing, persecutes her with attentions, which are so
marked, that, when he finds her husband ignorant of them, leads him
to the conclusion--which is natural--that they are not displeasing
to the wife. He avails himself of the privileges of the waltz, at
the marriage of Mrs. Delaney, to gratify his lustful anticipations.
He presses her arm and waist with his d----d fingers. Rides home
with her, and, according to his story, takes other liberties,
which she baffles and sets aside. But, mark the truth. Though she
requires him to set her down in the street--though she makes terms
for his forbearance--a wife making terms with a libertine--yet
he evidently sees her into the house, and when she is taken sick,
hurries for the mother and the physician. He tells just enough of
the story to convict himself, but suppresses everything which may
convict her. How know I that this resistance in the carriage was
more than a sham? How know I that he did not attend her in the house?
That they did not dabble together on their way through the dark
piazza--along the stairs?--Nay, what proof is there that he did not
find his way, with polluting purpose, into the very chamber?--that
chamber, from which, not three weeks after, she bade him fly to
avoid my wrath! What makes her so precious of his life--the life
of one who pursues her with lust and dishonor--if she does not burn
with like passions? But there is more."