". . . it is true. I love you so that you can kiss me even like you did that time. It terrifies me and I feel cold and weak, but it is enough that you say it is the most splendid thing you have ever known. Edmund, will you be angry if I say that I regret the days before we knew we loved? Everything was in a golden mist like you see in the valley at sunrise, and now I keep on feeling I do not understand you. Why do you say you cannot tell your father you love me? I am well-born, though it is true I have no _dot_, but, indeed, I am a good manager, and you say I am even prettier than the English ladies. Oh! I am lonely and frightened, and I want your arms round me. Now that I have said that, you cannot reproach me with being cold. . . ." "Your note has just come" (ran the next letter), "and I am oh! so miserable for you. You are not to think I am unhappy--I am happy to have loved you. If thinking about me adds to your unhappiness, I can even say--do not think about me. I can understand you cannot marry unless your fiancée has a _dot_, because of your estate. It is best that you should go, but you may see me to say good-bye. My dear one, my poor heart, what can I do to help you?" That was all of the letters to Milord--the letters he had given back. Next came letters that were never sent. "Chéri" (ran the first of them), "at last I can write out all that is in my heart, since you will never see these pages. I must write, or I shall go mad. . . . I don't regret, in spite of my shame and bewilderment, for I gave to you. I cannot even feel wicked, but I should not care if I did. I love you all the more now I know you are not what I thought. You are not a god or even a hero, you are a man, and so you are a child--my child, whose head I held on my breast. You have told me to write to you if I need your help. How can that be? All that is left to me is to live out my life here in dreams. I imagine your presence all day. If the door opens behind me and some one enters, I pretend it is you till the last moment possible--until Papa or one of the servants comes round my chair and speaks to me. I have been loved, and I love--that is a great deal to live on." That night she went on with the same letter. "Edmund, Edmund, it is not enough--I want you. My heart is breaking. I can only lie with my eyes shut and my face pressed down, and something beats out. 'I want you, I want you.' My heart broke when you wrote me your last note and I had to reply cheerfully because of you. I am not so cowardly but that I can still be glad you do not know my heart broke. _Edmund, I want you, I want you._" The last of the unsent letters to Milord was written several months later.