Chapter 7

With a beating heart and fearful, I knew not why, I dismissed the
servant and locking my door, sat down to read my father's letter.
These are the words that it contained.

"My dear Child

"I have betrayed your confidence; I have endeavoured to pollute your
mind, and have made your innocent heart acquainted with the looks and
language of unlawful and monstrous passion. I must expiate these
crimes, and must endeavour in some degree to proportionate my
punishment to my guilt. You are I doubt not prepared for what I am
about to announce; we must seperate and be divided for ever.

"I deprive you of your parent and only friend. You are cast out
shelterless on the world: your hopes are blasted; the peace and
security of your pure mind destroyed; memory will bring to you
frightful images of guilt, and the anguish of innocent love betrayed.
Yet I who draw down all this misery upon you; I who cast you forth and
remorselessly have set the seal of distrust and agony on the heart and
brow of my own child, who with devilish levity have endeavoured to
steal away her loveliness to place in its stead the foul deformity of
sin; I, in the overflowing anguish of my heart, supplicate you to
forgive me.

"I do not ask your pity; you must and do abhor me: but pardon me,
Mathilda, and let not your thoughts follow me in my banishment with
unrelenting anger. I must never more behold you; never more hear your
voice; but the soft whisperings of your forgiveness will reach me and
cool the burning of my disordered brain and heart; I am sure I should
feel it even in my grave. And I dare enforce this request by relating
how miserably I was betrayed into this net of fiery anguish and all my
struggles to release myself: indeed if your soul were less pure and
bright I would not attempt to exculpate myself to you; I should fear
that if I led you to regard me with less abhorrence you might hate
vice less: but in addressing you I feel as if I appealed to an angelic
judge. I cannot depart without your forgiveness and I must endeavour
to gain it, or I must despair.[35] I conjure you therefore to listen
to my words, and if with the good guilt may be in any degree
extenuated by sharp agony, and remorse that rends the brain as madness
perhaps you may think, though I dare not, that I have some claim to
your compassion.

"I entreat you to call to your remembrance our first happy life on the
shores of Loch Lomond. I had arrived from a weary wandering of sixteen
years, during which, although I had gone through many dangers and
misfortunes, my affections had been an entire blank. If I grieved it
was for your mother, if I loved it was your image; these sole emotions
filled my heart in quietness. The