I wonder whether it will seem as odd to you to receive a letter from me written at Rome as it is to me to write it. Our letters hitherto have been very few in number, and have only declared that in spite of obstacles we shall always love each other. I have never before had anything in truth to tell you; but now I have so much that I do not know how to begin or how to go on with it. But it must be written, as there is much that will interest you as my dearest friend, and much also that will concern yourself should you ever become my wife. It may be that a point will arise as to which you and your friends,--your father, for instance, and your brother,--will feel yourselves entitled to have a voice in deciding. It may be quite possible that your judgment, or, at any rate, that of your friends, may differ from my own. Should it be so I cannot say that I shall be prepared to yield; but I will, at any rate, enable you to submit the case to them with all fairness. I have told you more than once how little I have known of my own family,--that I have known indeed nothing. My mother has seemed to me to be perversely determined not to tell me all that which I will acknowledge I have thought that I ought to know. But with equal perversity I have refrained from asking questions on a subject of which I think I should have been told everything without questioning. And I am a man not curious by nature as to the past. I am more anxious as to what I may do myself than as to what others of my family may have done before me. When, however, my mother asked me to go with her to Italy, it was manifest that her journey had reference to her former life. I knew from circumstances which could not be hidden from me,--from her knowledge, for instance, of Italian, and from some relics which remained to her of her former life,--that she had lived for some period in this country. As my place of birth had never been mentioned to me, I could not but guess that I had been born in Italy, and when I found that I was going there I felt certain that I must learn some portion of the story of which I had been kept in ignorance. Now I have learnt it all as far as my poor mother knows it herself; and as it will concern you to know it too, I must endeavour to explain to you all the details. Dearest Fanny, I do trust that when you have heard them you will think neither worse of me on that account,--nor better. It is as to the latter that I am really in fear. I wish to believe that no chance attribute could make me stand higher in your esteem than I have come to stand already by my own personal character.