CHAPTER XLIX—THE END
My Dear Katie;—I know you will be very much pained when you read this letter. You two have been my only confidantes, and you have always kept me up, and encouraged me to hope that all would come right. And after all that happened last week, Patty's marriage, and your engagement,—the two things upon earth, with one exception, that I most wished for,—I quite felt that my own turn was coming. I can't tell why I had such a strong feeling about it, but somehow all the most important changes in my life for the last four years have been so interwoven with Patty and Harry Winburn's history, that, now they were married, I was sure something would happen to me as soon as I came to London. And I was not wrong. Dear Katie, I can hardly bring myself to write it. It is all over. I met her in the street to-day; she was riding with her father and the man I told you about. They had to pull up not to ride over me; so I had a good look at her, and there can be no mistake about it. I have often tried to reason myself into the belief that the evil day must come sooner or later, and to prepare myself for it; but I might have spared myself, for it could not have been worse than it is if I had never anticipated it. My future is all a blank now. I can't stay in England; so I have written home to ask them to let me go to New Zealand with East, and I am sure they will consent, when they know all.
“I shall wait in town till I get the answer. Perhaps I may be able to get off with East in a few weeks. The sooner the better; but, of course, I shall not go without seeing you and dear old Jack. You mustn't mind me calling him Jack. The only thing that it gives me any pleasure to think about is your engagement. It is so right; and one wants to see something going right, some one getting their due, to keep alive one's belief in justice being done somehow or another in the world. And I do see it, and acknowledge it, when I think over his history and mine since we first met. We have both got our due; and you have got yours, Katie, for you have got the best fellow in England.
“Ah! if I only could think that she has got hers! If I could only believe that the man she has chosen is worthy of her! I will try hard to think better of him. There must be more good in him that I have ever seen, or she would never have engaged herself to him. But I can't bear to stop here, and see it all going on. The sooner I am out of England the better. I send you a parcel with this; it contains her notes, and some old flowers and other matters which I haven't the heart to burn. You will be the best judge what should be done with them. If you see your way to managing it, I should like her to know that I had sent them all to you, and that, whatever may happen to me hereafter, my love for her has been the mainstay and the guiding-star of my life ever since that happy time when you all came to stay with us in my first long vacation. It found me eaten up with selfishness and conceit, the puppet of my own lusts and vanities, and has left me—well never mind what it has left me. At any rate, if I have not gone from worse to worse, it is all owing to her; and she ought to know it. It cannot be wrong to let her know what good she has scattered unknowingly about her path. May God bless and reward her for it, and you, too, dear cousin, for all your long love and kindness to one who is very unworthy of, but very thankful for them.
“Ever yours, affectionately,