"I am hardly yet, my dear friend, capable of estimating the true extent of my emotions. Like the buoyant seaweed torn from its native bed among the submarine forest of the corals, I have been tossed from wave to wave, hurried onwards by a stream more resistless than that which sweeps through the Gulf of Labrador, and far--far away as yet is the wished-for haven of my rest. Hitherto my life has been a tissue of calamity and wo. Over my head since childhood, has stretched a dull and dreary canopy of clouds, shutting me out for ever from a glimpse of the blessed sun. Once, and but once only have I seen a chasm in that envious veil--only once and for a few, a _very_ few moments, have I gazed upon the blue empyrean, and felt my heart expand and thrill to the glories of its liquid lustre. That once--oh, Mr Strachan, can I ever forget it?--that once comprises the era of the few hours which were the silent witnesses of our meeting! "Am I weak in writing to you thus? Perhaps I am; but then, Thomas, I have never been taught to dissemble. Did I, however, think it probable that we should ever meet again--that I should hear from your lips a repetition of that language which now is chronicled in my soul--it may be that I would not have dared to risk an avowal so candid and so dear! As it is, it matters not. You have been my benefactor, my kind consoler--my friend. You have told me that you love; and in the fullness and native simplicity of my heart, I believe you. And if it be any satisfaction to you to know that your sentiments have been at least appreciated, believe that of all the pangs which the poor Dorothea has suffered, this last agony of parting has been incomparably the most severe. "You asked me if there was no hope. Oh, my Thomas! what would I not give could I venture to answer, yes? But it cannot be! You are young and happy, and will yet be fortunate and beloved: why, then, should I permit so fair an existence to be blighted by the upas-tree of destiny under which I am doomed to languish? You shall not say that I am selfish--you shall not hereafter reproach me for having permitted you to share a burden too great for both of us to carry. You must learn the one great lesson of existence, to submit and to forget! "I am going far away, to the margin of that inhospitable shore which receives upon its rocks the billows of the unbroken Atlantic,--or haply, amongst the remoter isles, I shall listen to the seamew's cry. Do not weep for me. Amidst the myriad of bright and glowing things which flutter over the surface of this green creation, let one feeble, choking, over-burdened heart be forgotten! Follow me not--seek me not--for, like the mermaid on the approach of the mariner, I should shrink from the face of man into the glassy caverns of the deep.