Chapter XXXVII: Letter XXXVIII: To the SYLPH

Alas! I look for comfort when I open my kind Sylph's letters; yet in this before me you only point out the shoals and quicksands--but hold not out your sustaining hand, to guide me through the devious path. I have disobeyed your behest; but you know not how I have been urged, and my pained soul cannot support the repetition. I will ever be implicit in my obedience to you, as far as _I_ am concerned only; as to this particular point, you would not have had me disobeyed my husband, I am sure. Indeed I could do no other than I did. If he should make an ill use of the sums raised, I am not answerable for it; but, if he had been driven to any fatal exigence through my refusal, my wretchedness would have been more exquisite than it now is, which I think would have exceeded what I could have supported. Something is in agitation now; but what I am totally a stranger to. I have just heard from one of my servants, that Mr. Stanley, an uncle of Sir William's, is expected in town. Would to Heaven he may have the will and power to extricate us! but I hear he is of a most morose temper, and was never on good terms with his nephew. The dangers you hint at, I hope, and pray without ceasing to Heaven, to be delivered from. Oh! that Sir William would permit me to return to my dear father and sister! in their kind embraces I should lose the remembrance of the tempests I have undergone; like the poor shipwrecked mariner, I should hail the friendly port, and never, never trust the deceitful ocean more. But ah! how fruitless this wish! Here I am doomed to stay, a wretch undone.

Adieu!

J.S.