“You are very good to wish to set me right, though you say that you have no heart to give me—that you feel it is but mockery for you to make me the proposal you have. I do not so regard it, and I deeply sympathize with you in your great loss—in your blighted hopes, and honor you for your faithfulness to one who was so dear. But, Dr. Winthrop, a man in your position needs a pleasant home and a devoted wife, and I believe both those results would be obtained if I should accept your proposal; and more than that, a wrong would be righted—the Rochester-Hamilton fortunes, which should never have been willed otherwise upon such arbitrary conditions, would be secured to the proper heirs. Do not deem me unmaidenly, I pray, if I confess that my feelings toward you are of such a nature that I am not only willing, but glad, to devote my life to you—that I am even sanguine enough to hope that I shall yet make the future hold something of content, if not of positive happiness for you. Believing this, and knowing also that my own hopes have no higher aim than to make myself useful in contributing to your future comfort and interest, even though I may never win your love, I gratefully accept the offer of your hand, and pledge myself to be a faithful and helpful wife to you. “Yours now and ever, “SARAH ROCHESTER.” A groan of misery burst from Dr. Winthrop’s white lips as he finished reading this cunningly constructed epistle. “Has the girl no sense of shame—no discernment?” he cried fiercely. “Could she not understand that my letter was but a mere form—a simple pretext to give her a chance to set herself right with my mother and her own? Could she not see that I shrank from all thought of marriage, with any woman, with a feeling of absolute loathing? Great Heaven! She has pledged herself to me—she has made the affair a formal engagement, and I am bound to her in spite of myself!” Oh, if he could have foreseen what the result of his letter would have been, his hand would have withered before writing it! Still he believed that she really loved him; she had betrayed it involuntarily—as he imagined—that morning when he had gone to tell her of the danger of remaining in Paris; she had confessed it again in her letter to-day. Her life, then, would be ruined if she did not marry him. She would lose her fortune through no fault of her own, and her mother would also forfeit the independent control of the income of fifty thousand dollars. He realized that Miss Rochester was beautiful; that she would shine in society, and be an ornament in any man’s home, and having been allowed to see only the best side of her nature, he did not once imagine her to be the hypocrite that she was. Why, then, since his own life was so hopelessly ruined, should he not gracefully submit to the inevitable, and sacrifice himself to the wishes and good of others?