Her friends all began by trying to do her good. Even Ellen Nussey tried. Charlotte is very kindly cautioned against being "tempted by the fondness of my sisters to consider myself of too much importance", and in a parenthesis Ellen Nussey begs her not to be offended. "Oh, Ellen," Charlotte writes, "do you think I could be offended by any good advice you may give me?" She thanks her heartily, and loves her "if possible all the better for it". Ellen Nussey in her turn asks Charlotte to tell her of her faults and "cease flattering her". Charlotte very sensibly refuses; and it is not till she has got away from her sisters that her own heart-searchings begin. They are mainly tiresome, but there is a flash of revelation in her reply to "the note you sent me with the umbrella". "My darling, if I were like you, I should have to face Zionwards, though prejudice and error might occasionally fling a mist over the glorious vision before me, for with all your single-hearted sincerity you have your faults, but _I_ am not like you. If you knew my thoughts; the dreams that absorb me, and the fiery imagination that at times eats me up, and makes me feel society, as it is, wretchedly insipid, you would pity me, and I dare say despise me." Miss Nussey writes again, and Charlotte trembles "all over with excitement" after reading her note. "I will no longer shrink from your question," she replies. "I _do_ wish to be better than I am. I pray fervently sometimes to be made so ... this very night I will pray as you wish me." But Charlotte is not in the least like Ellen Nussey, and she still refuses to be drawn into any return of this dangerous play with a friend's conscience and her nerves. "I will not tell you all I think and feel about you, Ellen. I will preserve unbroken that reserve which alone enables me to maintain a decent character for judgment; but for that, I should long ago have been set down by all who knows me as a Frenchified fool. You have been very kind to me of late, and gentle, and you have spared me those little sallies of ridicule, which, owing to my miserable and wretched touchiness of character, used formerly to make me wince, as if I had been touched with hot iron. Things that nobody else cares for enter into my mind and rankle there like venom. I know these feelings are absurd, and therefore I try to hide them, but they only sting the deeper for concealment. I'm an idiot!"