To think that she was blotted out of existence was agony, when the imagination had been long employed to expand her faculties; yet to suppose her turned adrift on an unknown sea, was scarcely less afflicting.
After being two days the prey of impetuous, varying emotions, Maria began to reflect more calmly on her present situation, for she had actually been rendered incapable of sober reflection, by the discovery of the act of atrocity of which she was the victim.

She could not have imagined, that, in all the fermentation of civilized depravity, a similar plot could have entered a human mind.

She had been stunned by an unexpected blow; yet life, however joyless, was not to be indolently resigned, or misery endured without exertion, and proudly termed patience.

She had hitherto meditated only to point the dart of anguish, and suppressed the heart heavings of indignant nature merely by the force of contempt.

Now she endeavoured to brace her mind to fortitude, and to ask herself what was to be her employment in her dreary cell?
Was it not to effect her escape, to fly to the succour of her child, and to baffle the selfish schemes of her tyrant--her husband?
These thoughts roused her sleeping spirit, and the self-possession returned, that seemed to have abandoned her in the infernal solitude into which she had been precipitated.