Well, methinks that ever since that day when the letter arrived which changed our destiny, I have not merely remembered, but learned to understand these words. So that I have fought against the soreness of feeling that, on some matters at least, I was excluded from my husband's confidence. After two years of such utter openness of heart as has existed between us three--our mother, Eustace, and, younger and weaker though I felt, myself--such free discussion of all ideas and interests, of his scientific work, even to details which I could not grasp, after this there is undoubtedly something strange in the absolute reserve, indeed the utter silence, he maintains about everything concerning his family, his property, and our position and circumstances, the more so that, at the time of our marriage he often confided to me details connected with it. Thus, in that past which seems already so remote, he has often described to me this very house, these very rooms, told me his childish solitude and terrors, and spoken quite freely of the unhappy life of his mother by the side of his cruel and violent father, and among his father's brutal besotted companions; he had told me of the horrid heartlessness with which his only brother played upon his sensitiveness and abused his weakness, and of the evil habits, the odious scenes of intemperance and violence from which he was screened by his poor mother, and finally saved by her generous decision to part with him and have him educated abroad. He had mentioned the continual brawls of his uncles. But since his succession to the property, never a word has alluded to any of these things, nor to the knowledge he had given me of them. Once or twice, when I have mentioned, quite naturally, his dead brother, his mother (I am actually occupying her apartments, sleeping in her bed, and only yesterday Eustace spent the afternoon mending and tuning her harpsichord for me), he has let the subject drop, or diverted the conversation in an unmistakable manner. Nay, what is more significant, and more puzzling, Eustace has never given me a clue to whether he knew of the arrangements, the life, we should find here; before our arrival, he had never mentioned that the castle was, to all intents and purposes, in the hands of his kinsmen; nor has he dropped a word in explanation of so extraordinary a circumstance. And I have never asked him whether he knew to what manner of life he was bringing me, whether he intends it to continue, what are his reasons and plans. I have respected his reserve. But have I been perfectly loyal in hiding my wonder, my disappointment, my sorrow? _February_ 5, 1773.