ABSTRACT
At length his answer arrived, in which he promised that, in one month from its receipt, he would make his appearance before her in person. He named the ship in which he was to come, and the port, Plymouth, where he was to land. Oh, how she doated on this letter! She had preserved many preceding billets that she had received from him. But she had locked them in a cabinet, and placed them in a remote corner, where she would be least likely to fall upon them by accident. She scorned the idea of preserving them as fuel for her ill-fated and discarded passion. What she did, she resolved in the integrity of her heart, and / in the most entire good-faith, to accomplish. But she could not prevail upon herself to consign them to the devouring element. She could not consent to the violent and profane destruction of what was his, and might still be considered as representing him. It was enough, she thought, if she never opened the casket that contained these letters, never pampered her sight with a line that composed them, never voluntarily even looked upon the case in which they were enshrined.
