“I miss you very much, though papa surrounds us with gaiety; indeed, I think we have been gayer than ever lately; and he never seems so happy as when our dear old lawn is crowded with visitors. But I miss you, Harcourt, in spite of all the cruel insinuations in your last letter. The summer evenings seem long and dreary when I think of you, so far away, so unhappy, as your letters tell me you are, Harcourt, though you are too unselfish to admit the truth in plain words. I scarcely open the piano once in a month, now that I have no one to play concertante duets. I scarcely care for a new opera; for the men who come into our box bore me to death with their vapid talk, and I know that not one of them understands what he talks about. I am not happy, Harcourt, though you taunt me with my wealth and my position, and the difference between our lives. I am not happy, for our future seems to grow darker and darker every day. I have mentioned you to my father several times, and every time he seems more angry than the last; so now I feel that your name is tacitly tabooed; and any chance allusion to you from the lips of strangers makes me tremble and turn cold. I have tried in vain to comprehend the reason of my father’s aversion to any thought of a marriage between you and me. I have been so much a spoiled child, that to be thwarted or opposed on any subject seems strange to me, most of all when that subject is so near my heart. I can scarcely think that my dear father would allow any consideration of fortune to stand in the way of happiness, and yet that is the only consideration that can influence him, for I know that he always liked and admired you. You must awhile be patient: what I can do I will. And you must trust me, dear Harcourt, and not pain me again as you have pained me by those unkind doubts of my constancy. You know that money has never been any consideration with me; and you ought to know that I would willingly lose every penny of my fortune rather than sacrifice my promise to you.”