the impossibility of a legal ceremony and the importance in her case of an immediate union; and, understanding this, they seem to have considered her Imlay's wife. At least the rumours which months afterwards came to her sisters treated her marriage as a certainty. Charles Wollstonecraft, now settled in Philadelphia, wrote on June 16, 1794, to Eliza, a year after Mary and Imlay had begun their joint life: "I heard from Mary six months ago by a gentleman who knew her at Paris, and since that have been informed she is married to Captain Imlay of this country." The same report had found its way to Mr. Johnson, and through him again to Mrs. Bishop. It was hard to doubt its truth, and yet Mrs. Bishop knew as well if not better than any one Mary's views about marriage. She had, happily for herself, reaped the benefit of them. In her surprise she sent Charles's letter to Everina, accompanied by her own reflections upon the startling news.
The only record of Mary's connection with Imlay, which lasted for about two years, are the letters which she wrote to him while he was away from her, his absences being frequent and long. Fortunately, these letters have been preserved. They were published by Godwin almost immediately after her death, and were republished in 1879 by Mr. Kegan Paul. "They are," says Godwin, "the offspring of a glowing imagination, and a heart penetrated with the passion it essays to describe." She was thirty-five when she met Imlay. Her passion for him was strong with the strength of full womanhood, nor had it been weakened by the flirtations in which so many women fritter away what ever deep feeling they may have originally possessed. Her letters contain the unreserved expression of her
