Once, I used to like reading and hearing all about love and lovers, what they said and how they looked, and how happy they were in one another. Now, it seems as if these things ought never to be read or told by any mortal tongue or pen. When Max went away, I sat where I was, almost without stirring, for a whole hour; until Mrs. Granton came in and gave me the history of her drive, and all about Lucy Ansdell, who had died that afternoon. Poor girl--poor girl.. CHAPTER XI. HER STORY. |Here, between the locked leaves of my journal, I keep the first letter I ever had from Max. It came early in the morning, the morning after that evening which will always seem to us two, I think, something like what we read of, that “the evening and the morning were the first day.” It was indeed like the first day of a new world. When the letter arrived, I was still fast asleep, for I had not gone and lain awake all night, which, under the circumstances, (as I told Max) it was a young lady's duty to have done: I only laid my head down with a feeling of ineffable rest--rest in heaven's kindness, which had brought all things to this end--and rest in his love, from which nothing could ever thrust me, and in the thought of which I went to sleep, as safe as a tired child; knowing I should be safe for all my life long, with him--my Max--my husband. “Lover” was a word that did not seem to suit him--grave as he was, and so much older than I: I never expected from him anything like the behaviour of a lover--indeed, should hardly like to see him in that character; it would not look natural. But from the hour he said, “Is this my wife?” I have ever and only thought of him as “my husband.” My dear Max! Here is his letter--which lay before my eyes in the dim dawn; it did not come by post--he must have left it himself: and the maid brought it in; no doubt thinking it a professional epistle. And I take great credit to myself for the composed matter-of-fact way in which I said “it was all right, and there was no answer,” put down my letter, and made believe to go to sleep again. Let me laugh--it is not wrong; and I laugh still as much as ever I can; it is good for me and good for Max. He says scarcely anything in the world does him so much good as to see me merry. It felt very strange at first to open his letter and see my name written in his hand. _Saturday night_. My dear Theodora, |I do not say “dearest,” because there is no one to put in comparison with you: you are to me the one woman in the world. My dear Theodora;--let me write it over again to assure myself that it may be written at all, which perhaps it ought not to be till you have read this letter.