I have a proposition to make which I hope you will carefully consider. In your happiness and your lover's I have a tender and inextinguishable interest, since between you I perceive a deeper harmony than I have ever known to exist between man and woman. Your present misfortunes are due to my indiscretion; let me do what I can to repair the fault. I have in Yorkshire an old castle and a large estate. They are yours and your lover's, Julie, if you will accept them. You can escape from Vevay with the aid of my valet, when I have left there; you can join your lover, be wedded to him, and spend the rest of your days happily in the place of refuge I have designed for you. Reflect upon this, I beseech you. I should add that I have said nothing of this project to your lover. The decision rests with you and you alone. FROM JULIE TO MYLORD EDOUARD Your letter, mylord, fills me with gratitude and admiration. It would indeed be joy for me to gain happiness under the auspices of so generous a friend, and to procure from his kindness the contentment that fortune has denied me. But could contentment ever be granted to me if I had the consciousness of having pitilessly abandoned those who gave me birth? I am their only living child; all their pleasure, all their hope is in me. Can I deliver up their closing days to shame, regrets, and tears? No, mylord, happiness could not be bought at such a price. I dare brave all the sorrows that await me here; remorse I dare not brave. FROM JULIE TO HER LOVER I have just returned from the wedding of Claire and M. d'Orbe. You will, I know, share my pleasure in the happiness of our dearest friend; and such is the worth of the friendship that joins us, that the good fortune of one of us should be a real consolation for the sorrows of the other two. Continue to write me from Paris, but let me tell you that I am not pleased with the bitterness of your letters--a bitterness unworthy of my philosophic tutor of the happy bygone days at Vevay. I wish my true love to see all things clearly, and to be the just and honest man I have always deemed him--not a cynic who seeks a sorry comfort in misfortune by carping at the rest of mankind. FROM MADAME D'ORBE TO JULIE'S LOVER I am about to ask of you a great sacrifice; but I know you will perceive it to be a necessary sacrifice, and I think that your devotion to Julie's true happiness will endure even this final test. Julie's mother has died, and Julie has tormented herself with the idea that her love troubles have hastened her parent's end. Since then she has had a serious illness, and is now in a depressed state both physically and mentally. Nothing, I am convinced, can cure her save absolute oblivion of the past, and the beginning of a new life--a married life.