The young Mrs. Milton not only
wished it, but incited her family to write and beg that she might be
allowed to go home to stay the remainder of the summer. The request to
quit her husband at the end of the first month was so unreasonable,
that the parents would hardly have made it if they had not suspected
some profound cause of estrangement. Nor could Milton have consented,
as he did, to so extreme a remedy unless he had felt that the case
required no less, and that her mother's advice and influence were the
most available means of awakening his wife to a sense of her duty,
Milton's consent was therefore given. He may hare thought it desirable
she should go, and thus Mrs. Powell would not have been going very
much beyond the truth when she pretended some years afterwards that
her son-in-law had turned away his wife for a long space.
Mary Milton went to Forest Hill in July, but on the understanding that
she was to come back at Michaelmas. When the appointed time came, she
did not appear. Milton wrote for her to come. No answer. Several other
letters met the same fate. At last he despatched a foot messenger
to Forest Hill desiring her return.
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