[Postmark: July 14, 1846]
Monday Morning.
I must write.. even if you come to-morrow. Dearest,
if I told you all that nonsense on Saturday, it was for the
sake of telling you all and of hearing you say ‘What
nonsense’ afterwards. I never began by disguising any-
thing from you.. did I? I always wished you to see
how the arrows would strike out at us from that bush and
this bush. At us. For, granting that you seriously
thought it possible for such motives to divide me from
you, … ah, granting it, .. and you may well ask my
pardon!
The world! the world could as soon catch me with a
‘line’ so baited, as you could catch a trout with a silver
sixpence at the end of a string. Not only do I think with
you entirely on that subject, but I always thought like
you. Always I have hated all their worldly systems, and
not merely now, and since I have loved you. With a
hundred a year between us, I would have married you, if
you had not been afraid. And so, think whether directly
or ‘indirectly’ I am likely to be frightened into the breach
of an engagement by what I repeated to you or by what is
like unto it. No my weaknesses are of a different class
altogether.
The talk I talked over again to you, seemed to burn in
my ears the longer on that Saturday, because, while it was
being originally talked between Papa and my aunt (touch-
ing Arabella Hedley’s marriage), he had brought a paper
for me to sign about some money placed on a railway, (not
speculatively).. and my aunt, by way of saying a lively
thing, exclaimed, ‘Is that your marriage-settlement, my
dear?’.. which made me so nervous that I wrote my
name wrong and vexed Papa into being almost cross with
me. So one word got entwined with another, and all
seemed to hang around me Do you understand?
But you do not, how you pained me when you said that.
Ah-I thought I saw you gone.. ‘so far, so far,’ as you
said.. and myself left.
Yet I should deserve it of course, if I were to give you
up for the sake of that! .. or for any other motive, ..
except your advantage.. your own. I should deserve
everything in such a case, but should feel nothing..
not even my punishment. Could I? .. being without a
heart?
Ah-after all my mistrust, did I ever mistrust you so?
I have doubted your power to love me as you believed you
loved me, perhaps but your will to be true to one you
loved, without reference to worldly influences, I never
doubted, nor could. I think I will let you beg my pardon;
you unjust, dearest..
To so much over-praise, there should be a little wrong-
ing, too.. and therefore you are not, after all, ‘unjust’
.. only ‘dearest’!….
Such a letter, besides, you have written, .. and there
are two of them to-day! You will not go from me, I
think, ‘so far, so far.’ You will not leave me behind,
with the harpoon in me, to make red the salt wilderness of
waters.
Altogether, then, I forgive you, Robert and it is
glorious for me to have something to forgive you for,
who are the best so out of measure! I seize the
opportunity.
And you come to-morrow ! Which is right.. right!
I was afraid that you would not come And Mrs.
Jameson is perfectly uncertain as you may read in this new
note which reached me with yours to-night.
All the Hedleys have dined here. To-morrow will be
clear of them.. pure of them, I was going to write..
but I thought of Mrs. Hedley’s beaming affectionate face..
(so still lovely, she looked this evening, when she came
up-stairs to kiss me!).. and could not say such a wronging
word. You would like her you could not help it.
I was in the carriage to-day in Oxford Street.. and a
sealed letter was thrown exactly at my head, my aunt and
cousin and Henrietta being with me a sealed letter sealed
with arms (not of Agincourt!) and directed ‘For your
perusal.’ Guess the meaning of that! why just a tract by
the Rev. Villiers of that parish, upon the enormous wicked-
ness of frequenting plays and balls! Perhaps I looked
as if my soul had entered into the secret of the Polka-
dancers!-who can say?
So, good-night, dearest dearest!
I cannot give myself again to you,
being your own.
Of course this was written with the poker, as you will
see by the calligraphy.