'I am sick of the world, yet still I crawl upon its surface. I scorn and defy the whole human race, yet doom myself to be numbered in its community. While you, Albert Harleigh, you whom alone, of all that live and breath, I prize,--you, even your sight, I, from this moment, eternally renounce! Such the mighty ascendance of the passion which you have inspired, that I will sooner forego that only blessing--though the universe without it is a hateful blank to my eyes--than risk opposing the sway of your opinion, or suffer you to think me ignoble, though you know me to be enslaved. O Harleigh! how far from all that is vile and debasing is the flame, the pure, though ardent flame that you have kindled! To its animating influence I am indebted for one precious moment of heavenly truth; and for having snatched from the grave, which in its own nothingness will soon moulder away my frame, the history of my feelings. 'I have conquered the tyrant false pride; I have mocked the puerilities of education; I have set at nought and defeated even the monster custom; but you, O Harleigh! you I obey, without waiting for a command; you, I seek to humour, without aspiring to please! To you, my free soul, my liberated mind, my new-born ideas, all yield, slaves, willing slaves, to what I only conceive to be your counsel, only conjecture to be your judgment; that since I have failed to touch your heart, after having opened to you my own, a total separation will be due to my fame for the world, due to delicacy for myself.... 'Be it so, Albert ... we will part!--Though my fame, in my own estimation, would be elevated to glory; by the publication of a choice that does me honour; though my delicacy would be gratified, would be sanctified, by shewing the purity of a passion as spotless as it is hopeless--yet will I hide myself in the remotest corner of the universe, rather than resist you even in thought. O Albert! how sovereign is your power!--more absolute than the tyranny of the controlling world; more arbitrary than prescription; more invincible than the prejudices of ages!--You, I cannot resist! you, I shall only breathe to adore!--to bear all you bear,--the tortures of disappointment, the abominations of incertitude; to say, Harleigh himself endures this! we suffer in unison! our woes are sympathetic!--O word to charm all the rigour of calamity!.... Harleigh, I exist but to know how your destiny will be fulfilled, and then to come from my concealment, and bid you a last farewell! to leave upon the record of your memory the woes of my passion; and then consign myself for ever to my native oblivion. Till then, adieu, Albert Harleigh, adieu! 'ELINOR JODDREL.'