_You made a most extraordinary impression on Lady Julia. She admitted giving you a flower. I grew tired of hearing about you--nearly bored to death. At first she caused me to picture you as a beautiful Byronic hero, with a Great Grief or a Dark Secret; and I detest all that sort of trash and gush. But one day, while she was chattering, a miracle happened. I can't describe it. Perhaps it was like someone throwing wide a door that had always been shut, or setting free a bird or animal that had always been caged. All in one moment you became the most important fact in the world. Why? How? I don't know. I thought I knew you through and through. Often I could have said to Lady Julia: "No. That's all wrong. You know nothing about him."_ _I can't explain it. I am simply telling you the fact. From that time you haunted me. I became absolutely certain that our lives, some day, would meet; more certain than I am of the sun's existence and the moon's. When Mr. Crowberry told me of the plan for buying this place, and my becoming your neighbor out in these wilds, I ought to have been overwhelmed by the astonishing coincidence; but it seemed as natural and inevitable as the sunrise._ _At the first moment--no, not the first--I mean, the second moment of our meeting at your farm, I was mortified because you tried to look at me before I could look at you. Why did you do it? It was unkind. I had been thinking of you for four years; but you, if you thought of me at all, couldn't have thought of me more than four days. Yet, although you were in such a hurry to beat off my eyes, I saw in an instant that you were exactly as I had imagined you. Oporto and the Douro were not in the least like the engravings they showed me in England: but you were my dream come true. And all the time I sat on your right hand at dinner, I felt as if I had known you for years and years. You are not as clever as I expected; but you are gentle, and I am not one bit afraid of you._ _We nearly quarreled about monks and about the azulejos, did we not? Still, it was only on the surface. You think I make too little of religion; I think you make too much: but we have agreed quite amicably to differ. Deep down in our hearts we are at one._ _Since the day my father went to Lisbon I have been happy, for the first time in my life. You left me to make all the approaches; but I was very, very happy until Fisher mentioned Margarida. Last night I ached and burned with shame, because I had let fall the veil from my heart. But this morning I am glad and thankful._ _You are not like other men. And I think I am not wholly like other women. As soon as you have read this paper we are going to tear it into thousands of pieces. So I will be bold. Mine is not the only secret that is out. I know you love me, my friend, my only friend in the world._