Lend me thy aid, thy helping hand, my beloved. Decide and act for me, and be my weakness fortified, my hope restored, by thee. Let me lose all separate feelings, all separate existence, and let me know no principle of action but the decision of your judgment, no motive or desire but to please, to gratify you. Our marriage, you say, will facilitate reconcilement with my mother. Do you think so? Then let it take place, my dear Hal. Heaven permit that marriage may tend to reconcile! but, let it reconcile or not, if the wish be yours it shall occupy the chief place in my heart. The time, the manner, be it yours to prescribe. My happiness, on that event, will surely want but little to complete it; and, if you bid me not despair of my mother's acquiescence, I _will_ not despair. I am to send your letter, after reading, to my mother, I suppose. I have read it, Hal, more than once. And for my sake thou declinest her offers! When you thus refuse no sacrifice on my account, shall I hesitate when it becomes my turn? Shall I ever want gratitude, thinkest thou? Shall I ever imagine that I have done enough to evince my gratitude? But how do I forget thy present situation! Thy dying friend has scarcely occurred to me. Thy afflictions, thy fatigues, are absorbed in my own selfish cares. I am very often on the brink of hating myself. So much thoughtlessness of others; such callousness to sorrows not my own: my hard heart has often reproached thee for sparing a sigh or a wish from me; that every gloom has not been dispelled by my presence, was treason, forsooth, against my majesty, and the murmurs that delighted love should breathe, to welcome thy return, were changed into half-vindictive reluctance,--not quite a frown,--and upbraidings, in which tenderness was almost turned out of door by anger. In the present case, for instance, I have scarcely thought of thy dying friend once. How much thy disquiets would be augmented by the letters which I sent thee, never entered my thoughts. To hide our sorrows from those who love us seems to be no more than generous. Yet I never hid any thing from thee. All was uttered that was felt. I considered not attending circumstances. The bird, as soon as it was scared, flew into the bosom that was nearest, and, merely occupied with dangers of its own, was satisfied to find a refuge there. _And yet_--See now, Vanity, the cunning advocate, entering with his _And yet_. Would I listen to him, what a world of palliations and apologies would he furnish! How would he remind me of cases in which my sympathy was always awakened with attention! How often--But I will not listen to the flatterer. And, now I think of it, Hal, you differ from me very much in that respect. Every mournful secret must be wrung from you. You hoard up all your evil thoughts, and brood over them alone. Nothing but earnest importunity ever got from you any of your griefs.