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“But for my poor baby, I would not send to you again; for her I will do any thing, but sin. Mrs. Tilden has twice told me I must leave this house. Six months’ rent is due. I have ten dollars in my purse. Tell me where I am to go? What am I to do? I would not stay here if I could—the house has become hateful to me. I cannot bear the looks of Mrs. Tilden and Caroline. I cannot endure to have them touch my baby, for it seems to me as if their touch to my little innocent child were like a foul thing on an opening rosebud. The very sound of their voices disgusts and frightens me. Oh! it was not human to put me among such creatures. If you have deserted me for ever, I will earn food if I can to keep my baby alive. If I cannot earn, I will beg; but I will live no longer among these bad people. I had rather perish with my baby in the street. Oh! Mr. Stafford, how could you have the heart to put me here? and will you not now give me a decent home—for the baby’s sake—for a little while—till I am stronger, and can work for her?”

There was much more in the letter than we have cited; but it was all of the same tenor, and all showed plainly, that though betrayed and deserted, poor Fanny was not corrupted. Bold, and hardened indeed, must have been that human creature who could have cast the first stone at her.

For some months after Stafford took her under his protection (the protection the wolf affords the lamb!) he was passionately devoted to her. He made her world, and made it bright with such excess of light, that she was dazzled, and her moral sense overpowered. There was no true colouring or proportion to her perception; she was like one, who, having imprudently gazed at the sun, sees every object for a time in false and brilliant colouring. But these illusions fade by degrees to blackness; and so, as Fanny recovered from the bewilderment of passion, the light became shadow—ever deepening, immovable shadow. She lost her gayety, and no twilight of cheerfulness succeeded to it. The birth of her child recalled her to herself—the innocent creature was God’s minister to her soul—her pure love for it made impure love hateful to her. She became serious, then sad, and very wearisome to Stafford. He was accustomed to calling forth the blandishments of art. Fanny had no art. Her beauty was an accident, independent of herself. The unappreciable treasure of her immeasurable love she gave him, and for this there is no exchange but faithful, pure love; so her drafts were on an empty treasury. Passion consumes, sensuality rusts out the divine quality of love. Fanny’s character was simple and true—elemental. She had little versatility, and nothing of the charm of variety which comes from cultivation, and from observation of the world. What could she know of the world, whose brief time in it had been passed between
her school and Dame Hyat’s room in Houston street!

Stafford was extremely well read in certain departments of romantic literature. He had a standing order with a Paris publisher for such books as “George Sand,” “Paul de Kock,” and all their tribe produce. But this was a terra incognita to Fanny. Her reading was confined to the Bible and the tracts left at her aunt’s door. He delighted in those muses who have come down from the holy mount of inspiration and sacrificed to impure gods. Poetry, beyond that of her aunt’s hymn-book, was unknown to Fanny; and when Stafford brought her Beppa, and Don Juan, she understood but little of them, and what she understood she loathed. Stafford loved music. It was to him the natural language and fittest excitement of passion, and poor Fanny had no skill in this divine art beyond a song for her baby. He gave her lascivious engravings; she burst into tears at the sight of them, and would not be moved by his diabolical laugh and derision to look a second time at them. The natural dissimilarity and opposition between them came soon to be felt by both. He was ready to cast her—no matter where—as a burden from him; and she had already turned back, to walk through the fires her sin had kindled, to the bosom of infinite love and compassion.