Pardon me, but after the first surprise of this communication I rejoiced that you were thus free. Even were I other than I am--young, handsome, with a large income and everything favourable, you should still, at this crisis, be left exactly as you are, free to elect your own fate, as every woman ought to do. I may be proud, but were I seeking a wife, the only love that ever would satisfy me would be that which was given spontaneously and unsought:--dependent on nothing I gave, but on what I was. If you choose this suitor, my faith in you will convince me that your feelings was such, for him, and I shall be able to say, “Be happy, and God bless you.” Thus far, I trust, I have written with the steadiness of one who, in either case, has no right to be even surprised--who has nothing whatever to claim, and who accordingly claims nothing. Treherne will of course answer--and I shall find his letter at the camp when I return, which will be the day after to-morrow. It may bring me--as, indeed, I have expected day by day, being so much the friend of both parties--definite tidings. Let me stop writing here. My ghosts of old have been haunting me, every day this week; is it because my good angel is vanishing--vanishing--far away? Let me recall your words, which nothing ever can obliterate from my memory--and which in any case I shall bless you for as long as I live. “_I believe that every sin, however great, being repented of and forsaken, is by God, and ought to be by men, altogether forgiven, blotted out and done away?_” A truth, which I hope never to forget, but to set forth continually--I shall have plenty of opportunity, as a gaol-surgeon. Ay, I shall probably live and die as a poor gaol-surgeon. And you?= ````"The children of Alice call Bartrum father."= This line of Elia's has been running in my head all day. A very quiet, patient, pathetically sentimental line. But Charles Lamb was only a gentle dreamer--or he wrote it when he was old. Understand, I do _not_ believe you love this young man. If you do--marry him! But if, not loving him, you marry him--I had rather you died. Oh, child, child, with your eyes so like my mother and Dallas--I had rather, ten thousand times, that you died. CHAPTER VIII HER STORY. |Penelope has brought me my desk to pass away the long day during her absence in London--whither she has gone up with Mrs. Granton to buy the first instalment of her wedding-clothes. She looked very sorry that I could not accompany her. She is exceedingly kind--more so than ever in her life before, though I have given her a deal of trouble, and seem to be giving more every day. I have had “fever-and-agur,” as the poor folk hereabouts call it--caught, probably, in those long walks over the moorlands, which I indulged in after our return from the north --supposing they would do me good. But the illness has done me more; so it comes to the same thing in the end.