Six

Betrayal

July 1831

TN THE MONTHS TO come Lucretia’s friends and neighbors would obsessively ask themselves if the schoolmistress knew that William had been poisoned and even whether it was possible that she herself had poisoned him. But on the day of William’s funeral they had no idea that the man they called Dr. Chapman had been murdered, let alone any suspicions of his widow. Those who had been at the graveside ceremony returned to Lucretia’s home, where a big funeral supper was laid out, and consoled her in the most affectionate terms. Later, more friends and neighbors arrived, and a few, occupying the beds that had been emptied by the departure of the boarding school students, stayed on for several days to comfort the grieving woman. For her part, she continued to dress in black, albeit topping her outfits with her lilac-trimmed white turban, and at times stared disconsolately out the parlor windows and remarked that even the sun looked gloomy to her.

Seven days passed. Eight. And then abruptly, covertly, nine days after the funeral, she married Lino. It was a startling thing to do, for it was exceedingly rare to marry so soon after a spouse’s death.

According to Lucretia, it was Lino who proposed, telling her that William on his deathbed had suggested the boarder marry his widow so that he could die knowing his family would be looked after. Lino had told Lucretia this, then offered marriage in return for her past charity to him. “Lino never forgets a favor,” he’d said. “If you will marry me, I will take you to Mexico. And my mother will never forget what you have done. She has gold mines there, and you shall share a part of them.” Still, those words and the glittering promise they held hadn’t persuaded her. At least not at first. She’d rebuffed Lino, said to him, “Would it not be more proper for you to marry my daughter Mary?” But he’d declared, “No, it is you, Mrs. Chapman, that I wish to possess—it was you that took me in your door, not knowing who I was.” And when she’d continued to resist, pointing out the impropriety of her marrying anyone so soon after her husband’s death, he’d brushed away her reluctance by saying, “It would be thought nothing of in Mexico.”

According to Lino, it was Lucretia who proposed, saying simply but demandingly, “Lino, I want you to marry me.” He’d demurred and replied, “Not till I ask my father.” But she hadn’t wanted to wait, and she’d wheedled, “I love you so much” and hugged and kissed him so fervidly that finally, moved by her ardor, he’d agreed.

Whichever of the two did the importuning, on July 5, 1831, they were married in New York City in a secret ceremony performed by an Episcopalian bishop and witnessed by two strangers. Then, oddly, they parted. Lino took a steamboat south to Pennsylvania. Lucretia took one north to upstate New York. She was heading for the Syracuse home of her sister, Mercy Winslow Green, hoping to persuade Mercy to return with her to Andalusia and run the school while she and Lino made a wedding trip to Mexico to claim his riches.

She was deeply in love with Lino at the time. That very night, just after arriving in Albany and just before boarding an overnight mail coach that would take her from Albany to Syracuse, she wrote him a breathless letter, one of many passionate communications she would eventually send him. “My Dear Lino,” she wrote, “Very pleasant are the sensations which vibrate through my soul, when thus addressing you (‘My dear Leno [sic]’) for the first time to call you mine! and till death shall separate us! how pleasing, how delightful! And you, dearest Lino, so young, so fond, so noble, and so truly grateful to your Lucretia! My soul would gladly dwell upon you till the time for writing would pass away.

“The stage is to be ready to leave here at half past ten this evening, so I have but half an hour to say all I wish to my dearest dear as it was nearly 10 o’clock when the boat arrived at Albany.… I would rest myself here for the night, but I recollect your particular request, to return as quick as possible, which I cheerfully comply with, and for this reason have requested to leave here tonight, or else I should not be with my sister tomorrow; I shall make a short stay with her; but will write to you again while with her.

“I felt very lonesome on board the boat after you left me though I was surrounded by hundreds. The stage has come, and I must bid you goodbye, though very unwillingly; kiss all my dear children for me.

“I remain yours truly, and for the first time have the pleasure to subscribe myself,

Lucretia Esposimina”

The letter written, Lucretia handed it to the driver of a southbound mail coach and stepped into her northbound coach. It was a crude conveyance, its body suspended on heavy leather straps and its interior reeking from the strong odor of the four horses the driver was whipping to their maximum pace—five miles an hour. She could hardly bear to breathe, and worse, the roads the coach was traversing were altogether miserable, mere twists of irregular-shaped logs. As the vehicle bumped along the logs’ rough surface, she quickly became nauseated. So did her fellow passengers. A few said they couldn’t possibly continue the trip and when the coach stopped at a roadside tavern to change horses, they descended to rest up and wait for later transportation. But Lucretia was determined not to coddle herself, not to give in to the motion sickness that was plaguing her. Had she not taken a long and difficult stagecoach ride before, when she had come from Massachusetts to Philadelphia? Of course, she’d been young then, stronger than she was now, less used to comfort. But she had done it, and she could do it again. If she remained in the coach, she should be in Syracuse in twenty-four hours.

She stayed put, sitting up all night and dozing off as best she could. In the morning she was awakened by ominous thunder. The driver put on a slick rubbery garment, a coat of a waterproof material that a Scottish chemist named Macintosh had recently invented, and Lucretia, her traveling dress rumpled and damp, peered out the window and saw that the sky was darkening again.

By afternoon torrents of rain were descending, the roads were thick with mud, and the horses were barely able to lift their hooves. Lucretia gazed forlornly at mile after creeping mile of dripping hemlock and pines.

The rain went on and on, and in the evening the coach was still a good fifty miles from Syracuse. He wouldn’t reach the city that night after all, the driver informed her. He wouldn’t reach it by morning, either. With luck, he’d get there by mid-afternoon.

She hadn’t eaten since midday. A few hours earlier the driver had given her and the remaining few passengers a chance to get some supper, but she’d been too sick to her stomach to eat. Now she was hungry. But there would be no more stops till morning. Tired and in need of sustenance, she closed her eyes and tried to fall asleep despite the lurching coach and her rumbling stomach.

The mud-spattered vehicle finally arrived in Syracuse at about one o’clock the next afternoon, and Lucretia was deposited, just in time for the midday meal, at a large hotel called Comstock’s, a grand four-story establishment with balustraded porches and a flag-bedecked cupola. The manager pointed out the inviting dining room, its windows shaded with colorful wallpaper remnants and its tables set with white linen, where waiters were laying out a buffet of oyster pies, smoked hams, roasted pheasants, and canvasback ducks. But although she was starved, instead of entering the dining room Lucretia sat down in the lobby and wrote another letter to Lino. “I have not lain down one minute either night or day, since I took leave of you in New York,” she wrote, “nor have I taken but one meal a day … the bell is now ringing for dinner, and I am politely invited into the dining room; but I refuse to dine, or even call upon my sister, till I have taken the pleasure of writing a brief letter to my fond, to my very dear companion for life.” Then, indulging in the fantasy of how much better shielded from hardship she would have been had Lino accompanied her on her trip, she assured him, “I very well know that if my dear Lino had been with me, he would not have permitted his Lucretia to have rode a second night, all night, without resting on her bed.” His Lucretia. It pleased her to think of herself that way.

It pleased her, too, to think how soon she could be back home with him if she didn’t dawdle, didn’t take the time to eat a big meal. Asking the manager to get her just a glass of lemonade and a few crackers, she requested that he post her letter with the driver of the next southbound coach, then set out at once to see her sister.

Lino was long back in Pennsylvania by the time Lucretia left Comstock’s. His trip downriver to Philadelphia had taken him only about eight hours. He’d spent a couple of nights in town—the Cuestas had invited him to be their guest, he’d told Lucretia before they parted—and then, fresh and well-rested, he’d returned to the water, boarded another steamboat, and proceeded to Bucks County.

Descending from the boat and standing at the Andalusia wharf, that very wharf where just two months earlier he’d been thrown ashore tattered and virtually penniless, he felt pleased with himself. He was no longer shabby. He was wearing a brown suit, one of Watkinson’s modish outfits. He’d been over to the tailor’s during his stay in Philadelphia, been there to order a light-colored lightweight summer suit. But Watkinson had advised against the purchase, saying he might have to charge as much as forty dollars to make a suit from the fabric Lino wanted. Lino had told him scornfully that the price didn’t worry him, that he’d often paid fifty for a suit in that fabric. But the snooty tailor had refused to make the garment. No matter. The brown suit was splendid enough.

Leaving the river, Lino strolled up the hill and headed toward the Chapman house. When he glimpsed it, that very mansion to which, with a snapping dog at his ankles, he’d come begging for a room, he felt a surge of pride. He was no longer a destitute supplicant. The house was his now. So was the land on which it sat. So, too, for that matter, was Lucretia’s piano, her beds and sofas, her carpets, her horse and carriage, even her jewelry and clothes.

All these things were Lino’s because in 1831 all that a married woman possessed—her earnings, her real estate, her inheritances, and her personal effects—belonged to her husband. Moreover, if she had been married previously and died without making a will, the children of her previous union could not inherit their father’s property, for that, too, belonged to the man to whom she was wed at the time of her death. Early feminists like the charismatic lecturer Frances Wright were already denouncing such laws as encouraging robbery and possibly even murder. Lino, standing in the road and gazing at the physical manifestations of his good fortune, the graceful mansion, the tree-shaded lawn, the vast play yard that circled down to the road, was about to reap the benefits of those laws. Soon after traversing the play yard and entering the house, he made an inventory of all of Lucretia’s household possessions. A day later he invited two men to the house, introduced them to the servants as the Spanish minister and his secretary, and gave them a large leather trunk to cart away. Inside it were many of William’s expensive morocco-bound books, as well as Lucretia’s ornate silver spoons.

Up in Syracuse, Lucretia was having trouble locating her sister, for Mercy and her family were no longer at the address she had for them. “They’ve moved from Syracuse,” she was informed by friends of theirs, General and Mrs. Mann. “They’ve moved ten or fifteen miles into the country.”

Lucretia was bitterly distressed.

“Spend the night with us,” Mrs. Mann urged her.

But in her hurry to return to Lino’s arms, Lucretia wouldn’t hear of it. “I should not be able to sleep,” she wailed.

Mrs. Mann heard the frenzy in her voice and directed her to the home of Mercy’s eldest daughter, a young woman who had married a Syracuse man and was living in town with him.

Lucretia set out in the direction of her niece’s house at once, walking rapidly despite her fatigue. When she reached her destination, she begged her niece for the indulgence due to an aunt and asked the young woman to drive her to her mother’s place immediately. Mercy’s daughter didn’t own a carriage, but she borrowed one, and by late afternoon aunt and niece were sitting in it and heading for the farmlands outside the city.

Their progress was slow. The roads were still so muddy that it wasn’t until ten o’clock at night that they finally arrived at Mercy’s farmhouse, which was silent and dark by then. Astonished that she had the strength, for she had not been to bed for two nights, Lucretia pounded and pounded on the door until at last someone heard her. It was her night-capped brother-in-law, who dazedly lit her way in and awakened the entire family. Minutes later she was hugging and kissing her sister and a rash of little nieces and nephews she’d never seen, and Mercy was bustling around the kitchen setting out a midnight supper.

The whole family joined in the feast, and Lucretia told them about William’s death. But she didn’t mention her new husband. She wanted to talk to Mercy alone about that—that and the fact that she needed Mercy to come to Andalusia. She waited, patient now, till her brother-in-law and the children had eaten their fill and gone back to bed, and then she began telling her sister about Lino. She told Mercy how wonderful he was and how fortunate she felt to have found him. She told Mercy he was smart and rich and kind to her children. Then finally she asked Mercy to come back to Pennsylvania with her and look after her school and property while she and her wonderful new husband went to Mexico to obtain his fortune.

The child-burdened Mercy listened enviously to Lucretia’s romantic tale, and when it was done she said yes, she’d go to Andalusia. She’d take the littlest children with her, and be ready to leave in three days’ time.

Planning, the two sisters stayed up until sunrise, when finally Lucretia excused herself and retired. But although it was now three nights since she’d last lain down in a bed and experienced the comfort of sheets and a plump quilt, she did not rest long. By eleven in the morning she was up and, with a manic energy, penning another letter to Lino. She wrote it as quickly as she could—Mercy had told her that if she got her letter ready swiftly, one of her nephews could take it into Syracuse and get it onto the afternoon mail coach. She called Lino “my pretty little husband.” She told him she’d be with him in a week. She cautioned him to “be careful, my dear, and not spill and so lose our precious love” and, referring for the first time to her children as his children, too, asked him not to “let our children see the nonsense I have written.” Then she paused. Outside, her nephew was already waiting with his horse hitched. He was snapping his whip impatiently. The way young men did when they were kept waiting. The way Lino did when he was kept waiting. It was time to stop writing. But she couldn’t resist adding a few more endearments. “Goodbye, goodbye, dear Lino,” she closed, “Goodbye. It seems a long time to wait till next Wednesday, before I meet the fond embrace of him who is so dear to me, as is my young General Esposimina.”

The reunion between Lucretia and her young general the following week was not altogether blissful. At first Lucretia was ecstatic to be with him again. But her mood was somewhat dampened when she learned that Lino had given William’s books to his friends from the Spanish ministry—“as a memento,” he put it—and by the discovery that her silver spoons were missing.

“The black woman took them,” Lino said, blaming the disappearance of the silverware on Ann, who was no longer employed at the house. “I followed her to Philadelphia and accused her,” he went on. “She acknowledged the theft, paid me in part, and promised to pay the rest.”

Lucretia accepted this explanation and in the next few days threw herself into preparing for her trip to Mexico. She sorted through her clothes, the flat, narrow shoes that pinched her toes but made her large feet look uncommonly graceful, the lace-up corsets she needed to wear under Esther’s elaborate dresses if she was going to achieve the wasp-tiny waist the seamstress insisted on, the dresses themselves, so full-skirted and balloon-sleeved they looked like something that might be useful in a shipwreck. Would they be in style in Mexico? She supposed so. Dresses just like them were being shown in the latest issues of the new fashion magazine, Godey’s Lady’s Book. So were fanciful hats in shades of sea-green and lilac. She had her lilac-trimmed turban. She’d take that. And maybe her velvet cloak.

When she wasn’t packing, she was giving last-minute instructions to Mercy about the school. There’d be two new girls this autumn—Mercy should treat them less sternly than the returning girls or they might get homesick and ask to be withdrawn. She shouldn’t neglect the weekly exams, or forget to give the medals to those who scored highest—it was the best way to make the girls proud of their accomplishments. She should be sure to assign readings in all the subjects promised by the school’s advertisements—Lucretia had shown Mercy all her preferred readings, hadn’t she?

On the third day after her return, when she had gone over and over with Mercy the things she expected her to do, Lino announced that he ought to be attending to a chore that he and Lucretia had agreed needed to be done: selling the horse and carriage to raise money for their honeymoon trip. He could do it that morning, he said. He’d drive into Philadelphia, and take little Lucretia along for company. If he got a good price for the horse and carriage, he’d sell them right on the spot, and if he sold them, he and the child would take the boat home.

Lucretia approved and helped her daughter get dressed for the excursion. Lino hitched up the horse, kissed her goodbye, and then, to her surprise, asked her to give him her watch.

“But you have William’s already,” she pointed out.

Lino said yes, but that he wanted something of hers to remind him of her while they were apart. In exchange, he would give her a memento—a pretty gold chain he’d received as a gift from one of his friends.

Lucretia, touched by his sentimentality, handed him her gold watch, and let him fasten his chain around her neck.

That evening little Lucretia came trudging up the hill from the steamboat wharf. She was alone, and in her hand she clutched a letter addressed to her mother. It was from Lino. He’d just learned, he wrote, from a note given to him by the Mexican consul, that his old friend Casanova, the man he and Lucretia had tried to see at Joseph Bonaparte’s, had died suddenly in Maryland over the weekend and, before expiring, left him forty-five thousand dollars. The bequest was waiting for him in Baltimore, and he was going down there immediately to pick it up.

Aside from this untoward news, the letter was filled with extravagant expressions of love. Lino couldn’t write English, but he’d located a bilingual scribe and dictated his sentiments to him. “My Beloved Wife,” he’d dictated, “Consider my situation since my arrival in this city. The first news I get is the Death of my friend, then I am obliged to be separated from you.… But I pray that [the Lord] will sustain [me] in all my troubles and allow me to Return into those kind and endearing loving arms of thine. Oh! My Dear wife how is it possible that Lino could survive the loss of one so loving and so dear to his bosom should he meet with the misfortune of losing you.… I would first see the sun stop its Carrier through this wide world, and be plunged in the most green or blackest gulphs that demons could invent, than have it said that I should Repay you with ingratitude.”

Lucretia, although startled by the letter, felt deeply sorry for her unfortunate husband. He’d lost his sister just a while ago. Now the poor man had lost his dear friend Casanova. She pored over his melancholy words, reading them again and again. She even read them aloud to Mercy, who declared Lino’s letter to be an admirable piece of writing.

The following day Lucretia went to the Andalusia post office to see if there was any more mail from Lino. The postal clerk checked but could find no letter, and Lucretia returned home disappointed. However, increasingly addicted to self-deception, she refused to entertain the notion that her ardent new husband might be neglecting her, and instead began to worry that his delicate health might be adversely affected by his loss. After a few hours, she became so sure he was sick that she considered going down to Baltimore to look after him. But she was low on cash—she’d given Lino whatever money she’d had about the house before he left—and finally, deciding not to join him, she sat down and wrote to him again.

It was a loving letter, filled with mournful observations like “the whole house is dull without you; the doors themselves seem to move on their hinges with melancholy” and packed with domestic details—news of the servants, news of the children. Mary, the new laundress, had wept when she heard about the sad fate of Lino’s friend. Little Lucretia had gotten over her disappointment at having had her excursion to Philadelphia cut short. Little John had asked his mother to send Lino a kiss from him. Little Abby Ann, usually so bashful about expressing her feelings, had asked her to send him twenty-seven kisses and say she loved him very much.

She addressed the letter to Lino in care of the general post office in Baltimore, and on the envelope she painstakingly printed a long row of asterisks, twenty-seven in all, with a note saying, “Those stars represent Abby Ann’s kisses, sent to you, my dear, all given to me without stopping.”

Lino had, in fact, written to Lucretia a day after telling her he was going to Baltimore. He’d sold the horse and carriage, receiving forty dollars for them, and used some of the money to book passage on a steamboat downriver. He’d boarded the boat, found a man willing to translate his words into English and write them down for him, and dictated a second letter to his bride, swearing that he’d be home soon and would never again absent himself from her. But either he or the scribe must have delayed in mailing the letter, for four days after the date on which it was composed, Lucretia still had not received it, and as those long days without word from Lino wore on, she became thoroughly convinced that nothing short of his being desperately sick could explain his not having written.

On the fourth night without word from him, in the sweltering darkness that kept her tossing and turning on her sweat-drenched mattress, Lucretia decided that, strapped for cash or no, she had best go down to Baltimore to look after her new husband. At three in the morning she climbed out of bed, borrowed money from Mercy, and, at the first signs of dawn, hurried out of the house to catch the early morning stagecoach into Philadelphia. She would pay a call on the Cuestas, she planned. Perhaps they had heard from Lino. If they hadn’t, if there was no news of him at all, she would take the steamboat down to Baltimore.

The city was in the grip of a heat wave that morning, the thermometer already reading close to a hundred degrees. Tropical temperatures had arrived earlier in the week, but it had been uncomfortably hot all summer, and Philadelphians by the hundreds had been fleeing the torrid town. Many had flocked to the nearby New Jersey seaside resorts of Cape May and Long Branch, where both men and women could swim in the sparkling surf, albeit at separate hours, others had opted for more luxurious and distant retreats, traveling south to the little Allegheny town of Sweet Springs to cool themselves in mountain air or north to New York’s Niagara Falls to enjoy its solemn rocks and mighty rush of waters.

The Cuestas had gone to see that spectacular waterfall. Lucretia didn’t know this. She was sure she would find them at home—Lino had said that just a few days ago he’d received the news of his friend’s death from Colonel Cuesta. Descending from the stagecoach, she proceeded on foot to Cuesta’s house, regretting as she dodged bright stabs of sun that came slashing through the poplars that she’d let Lino take the horse and Dearborn. Without them, she’d not be arriving in the high style with which she’d first visited the consul. Indeed, she’d not be arriving in any style whatsoever, for her clothes were plastered to her body and the once-tight little curls of her upswept hair were hanging limp.

At the Cuestas’ home she received the news of their absence. “They’ve gone to the Falls of Niagara,” a servant told her.

Herself feeling the effects of the heat wave, she accepted that news without much surprise. But then the servant volunteered that the Cuestas had been gone for quite a while.

He must be mistaken, Lucretia said. Colonel Cuesta, she pointed out, had given Lino a letter at the beginning of the week.

The servant shook his head. “Señor Espos y Mina has not been here for a long time.”

Then why had Lino said he’d been there? Lucretia wondered, and if the Cuestas had been gone for a month, where had Lino stayed when he went to Philadelphia after their wedding? At the LeBruns? At the United States Hotel? It was a favorite haunt of literary men and military officers and once, one gaudy clandestine night while William was still alive, Lino had taken her there. But if he’d stayed at the hotel, or anywhere else, why hadn’t he mentioned that he hadn’t stayed with the Cuestas? Her stomach began to churn as if she were still on the Syracuse mail coach.

A few moments later she took leave of the Cuestas’ servant and set out to make inquiries about Lino at the LeBruns’ and at the hotel. The merciless midsummer sun was fiercer than ever, and the streets almost deserted. She tried to cool herself, stirring the air with her fan as she strode, but she quickly became drenched with sweat, and when she passed the dark, welcoming entrance of Watkinson’s tailor shop, she decided to go inside for a bit and refresh herself.

The tailor greeted her effusively, and before she could speak, surprised her by saying he’d driven out to Andalusia a few days ago to pay a call on her.

She told him she hadn’t known, that she’d been up north visiting her sister, and she apologized for not having been available to receive him.

“I went to inform you that Mina was ordering too much clothing,” the tailor said. “I thought it my duty to inform you of this.”

His duty? Lucretia was puzzled by his words.

Then all too quickly the tailor was explaining them. He hadn’t wanted to make Lino a summer suit he’d requested, he was saying, because he hadn’t wanted her to feel obligated to pay for yet another suit. “It would be,” he was saying, “like taking the bread out of your children’s mouth.”

Lucretia paled, but Watkinson didn’t notice. “I think your Señor Lino is as great a scoundrel,” he confided, “as ever lived.”

Lucretia mustered whatever dignity she could and said, “I hope not, Mr. Watkinson.” But within her, she could once again feel her stomach turning over and over.

“I sent to the consul’s to inquire respecting him,” Watkinson chattered on. “The consul said he knew nothing of him, and knew neither him nor his father. He said”—Watkinson hesitated for a moment and then plunged ahead—“he said that he believed Señor Lino to be an impostor.”

Lucretia stared at him, and this time Watkinson noticed the effect his words were having on her. She looked, he would later recall, as if she had received an injury, as if his words had physically struck her. But she didn’t acknowledge the hurt with her words. She thanked him, said merely, “You have acted perfectly right.”

Then she stumbled out of the shop.

Once she was on the street again Consul Cuesta’s assessment of Lino kept reverberating in Lucretia’s ears. She tried not to credit it. Lino was incapable of insincerity, she told herself. Lino was incapable of inflicting on her the pain his being an impostor would produce. There must be some mistake. Still, some part of her must have known that what the consul had said might be true, for she abandoned her search for her missing husband and instead of proceeding to Baltimore went straight back to Andalusia.

When she reached home she began to go through Lino’s belongings, searching his pockets, rifling through his bureau drawers, flipping through his mail. On the bedroom mantelpiece an unopened letter caught her eye. It was addressed to Lino in her care, and it bore the return address of the United States Hotel. She ripped open the envelope—her distressing day in Philadelphia had made her feel no qualms about reading Lino’s mail—and found inside a bill directed to the attention of “Mr. Amalio.” The bill said:

July 8 to 9, 1831
Board for self and 2 ladies	$3.00
Use of a private parlour	$1.00
TOTAL	$4.00

July eighth. That was when she’d reached Syracuse after traveling, sleepless and starved, for thirty-six hours. July ninth. That was when she’d stayed up for yet another night, trying to prevail upon her sister to come to Andalusia—so that she could go to Mexico with her pretty little husband.

When she read the bill, Lucretia’s eyes filled with tears. Lino, she would later say, had left the bill instead of a dagger to pierce her to the heart.

Lino continued to write to Lucretia. He wrote to her from Baltimore, telling her that a provision in American law was preventing him from claiming the money Casanova had left him, so he was going down to Washington to seek the assistance of “his excellency the President,” who he was sure would receive him. He wrote to her from Washington, telling her that Jackson had indeed received him, not just once but several times, and that he’d visited him both alone and in the company of a friend, an English duke. On one of these visits, he said, the president “expressed great desire” to meet Lucretia, and he’d promised the great man he’d present her to him “speedily.”

His letters were as flowery as usual. “I find your presence so necessary to my happiness that to be without you even for a short period is insupportable to me,” he wrote in one. “As often as I remember your caresses my heart is afflicted,” he wrote in another. “My blood is frozen with the most withering ice, and my eyes pour forth at every moment the most soul-shed tears.” In a third he declared, “When I left Baltimore I really thought that I should lose my senses. My soul poured forth showers of tears. I looked upon the sky that stretched itself over Pennsylvania and I re-echoed in my heart the sweet name of Lucretia Esposimina.… Dear Lucrecia [sic], there is neither day nor night of pleasure for me when away from you. I neither eat, drink, or sleep. All is melancholy in my soul. I fear that I shall be hurried to the grave ere I see you and fold you in one long embrace.” So effusive was he when composing this particular letter that the bilingual scribe to whom he was dictating his words appended his very own postscript. “The translator of the above,” wrote the scribe, “cannot close his duties without expressing the hope of one day beholding a lady capable of inspiring such ardent affection as that betrayed by the foregoing letter—indeed he almost regrets having undertaken so dangerous a task [as] he fears that he has already received by contagion the passion expressed by the writer of this letter. He mentions this in hopes that the lady will find in it an excuse for the tremulous motion of his hand in writing the translation. He is the lady’s slave.”

Lucretia received these letters, and on a Sunday afternoon she spread them out on her desk and reread them. It was the first time in over a week that she’d sat at the desk. Shortly after finding the bill from the United States Hotel, she’d noticed that the flesh on her neck, where she still wore the chain Lino had given her, was turning a coppery green. She’d ripped off the chain, taken it to a Philadelphia jewelry appraiser, and learned that the chain wasn’t gold at all, just a cheap fake. That news, combined with the hotel bill, had made her so depressed she’d taken to her bed, incapable of any activity. But today, the last day in July, she’d finally roused herself and decided to answer Lino’s letters.

Picking up her pen, she wrote swiftly, furiously. She told Lino he’d perpetrated an “extensive robbery” on her and her innocent children. She said that it was true that before he went away, she’d given him many of her possessions, among them her “horse and carriage, gold and silver watches, breast-pins, finger-rings, medals, musical box, silver bells with whistle, cake basket,” but that she’d done so with the understanding that he was going to sell them and return with the proceeds. And she said that now she had begun to suspect that he had no intention of returning and no intention of reimbursing her for her property. In which case he was a common thief.

Her words were bitter and stern. But despite all she had learned about Lino in the last ten days, she still seemed to believe his lies, among them that he had actually been entertained by Andrew Jackson. “You say in your last letter,” she chided, “that as often as you remember me, you bathe yourself in floods of tears.… I cannot think you indulge in grief [when] you visit with the President frequently, and have the honour of walking with a Duke of England.” And although she managed to demand that Lino never write to her again unless he paid her back, she still seemed to be in love with him, or at least she still felt possessive about him. Spinning out a painful fantasy in which she supposed Lino to have fallen for another woman, she charged him with having adorned that other woman’s fingers with her rings, and jealously speculated that his new love was making her Lino “perfectly happy.”

Then, in the midst of this dreaded scenario, she stopped herself, and in a sentence that would come back to haunt her, abruptly concluded her communiqué with, “But no, Lino, when I pause for a moment, I am constrained to acknowledge that I do not believe that God will permit either you or me to be happy this side of the grave.”

When she was done, she signed the bottom “Lucretia”—she was no longer, as far as she was concerned, “Lucretia Espos y Mina”—and, taking the letter into Philadelphia, mailed it to Lino in care of the general post office in Washington.