Do not imagine, dear Sibella, that because I have run through so many lines without a word of congratulation I am insensible to the joy which swells in your bosom on the expected return of your lover. I do indeed congratulate you. Your uncle becomes reasonable. His mysteries and his contradictions vanish. Sibella expects her Clement; and the heavy gates of Valmont Castle will fly back, that peace and liberty may enter. Nevertheless, in the prosperity of your expectations, forget not the Hermit in the armoury, and the longings of your CAROLINE ASHBURN LETTER XI FROM CLEMENT MONTGOMERY TO ARTHUR MURDEN Dear Arthur, Precisely such a command to return home, so sudden, and so unexpected as you received five months past from Sir Thomas Barlowe, have I received from Mr. Valmont; but the speed of your obedience bore no proportion to mine, for hither have I come with a rapidity which scarcely yielded to rest and refreshment. Here I am already arrived almost within sight of the castle's prison like towers, and here have I been traversing the paltry room of an inn for one hour and three quarters. How much longer I shall stay here I know not, but by heaven were I to depart with a thorough good will, it would be to take the road back to the continent. Arthur, Arthur, what a lesson it is that I have to get by rote! 'Fully assured, Clement,' says Mr. Valmont in his letter, 'that you cannot have departed from the rule of conduct I desired you to pursue, I do not doubt but that you will joyfully quit the haunts of treacherous sordid men, to enjoy with me the pleasant solitude of Valmont castle, &c. &c.' No one knows better than yourself, dear Murden, how closely I have pursued Mr. Valmont's _rule of conduct_, and I think you can guess also how greatly I shall now _enjoy the pleasant solitude of Valmont castle_. For a week, a month, perchance, the blooming Sibella will render the wilderness a world. Could I flatter myself, that Mr. Valmont recals me to give her to my arms, how I should bound over the distance which now separates us? No, Arthur, no such blessing awaits your luckless friend; I am to look on her as a sister, says Mr. Valmont. Good heaven! and he recals me to stand perpetually on the brink of a precipice! For how can I hear her, look on her, touch her, and be a brother? Nay, the very first moment of my entrance into that castle may undo me, for she will rush to my embrace, she will cover me with kisses, and his chilling eye will be on me. Had Mr. Valmont left me with the cottagers my parents, I had never seen Sibella; then I had dreamed through a stupid existence, without knowing life and love. Had he kept me the recluse of his woods, she had by this time infused her wild untamed spirit unto me, and I should have torn her from him, imagining we could live on berries, and drink water.