While you lay ill, the Straffords concealed from me that my husband had been to the house demanding my return home; but when you were almost well, they told me not only this, but that he had declared in the village that he would punish us both for our flight.

It was then that Mr.Strafford recommended me to think seriously of a final escape.
"'It is evident,' he said, 'that you neither can, nor ought, to put yourself and your child again into his power--while you remain on the island it must be here; but I strongly advise you to return to England, or conceal yourself from him in some way.' "I gratefully accepted his invitation to remain for a little while at his house--the rest of his plan could not be hastily decided upon; and while I deliberated, a letter arrived from England.

Mr.Strafford, on hearing of the scene which ended in your illness, had carried out an idea which, he afterwards told me, he had long entertained, and written to my cousin George.

The letter which now arrived was in answer to this, though it contained an enclosure for me.

My appeal to my father had been made just in time; it reached him on his deathbed, and he forgave me.