"Hon. EDWARD MARKHAM:
"Dear Sir,—I am in receipt of yours. It was, perhaps, necessary for you to say some words to me. I may not judge of what would be fitting; I feel that you have said more than was required. I had a boy's sincere liking for you; but when I failed to secure the good-will of anybody, it is certain that there were radical defects in my character, and you but entertained the common feeling towards me. It was an honest, hearty dislike, which I have accepted—as I accept other things—without complaint or appeal. There is one near you who can explain how impossible it is that I can become an object of your interest or care. I am poor; let me remain so; I like it. Let me alone to buffet and be buffetted. The atmosphere in which I live is cold and thin, and exercise is needful for me. I have not deserved well of the world, and the world has not been over kind to forget it. Leave me to wage the war with it in my own way. It was God's pleasure to remove from me those upon whom I had natural claims, and I do not murmur, nor do I allude to it only as an indication that I am to go on alone.
"I am aware that I do not meet you in the spirit which prompts your generous and manly kindness—no matter. Think that it proceeds from something ignoble in my nature, and be glad that you may in no way be involved in any failure that awaits me.
"I am sure Mrs. Markham has always been most kind to me, and if on the miserable night when I left my own mother I could have stolen to her somewhere, and have touched her robe with my lips, it would have been most grateful to me. We shall meet probably again, and I am sure our intercourse may be that at least of pleasant acquaintances.
"With the sincerest respect,
"A.B.E.
"P.S.—Your postscript takes me at disadvantage. What can I say? Its kindness is most unkind. The horse is a mount fit for a Prince. I wish he might be found useful to Miss Markham; if she will accept him, I would be glad that he might be devoted to her service. More than this I cannot say.
"B."
I am inclined to follow these letters back to Newbury. It took a round week for a letter and its answer to pass between Newbury and Jefferson both ways. Somehow, it so happened that Julia, on the third day after mailing hers to Bart, was at the Post-office every day, on the arrival of the Northern mail, with the air of an unconcerned young woman who did not expect anything. On the seventh, two letters in a hand she knew were handed her by the clerk, who looked at the time as if he thought these were the letters, but said nothing.
On her way home she opened one of them and read it, and paused, and read, and studied as if the hand was illegible, and looked grave and hurt, and as if tears would start, and then calm and proud. "When she got home she silently handed the other to her father, and her own to her mother; then she went to her room. An hour later she came back, took her letter, and going into her father's office, laid it open before him, receiving his in return. This she read with a sad face; once or twice a moisture came into her eyes in spite of her, and then she sat and said nothing; and her mother came in and read her husband's letter also.