This, my dear father, is how your will—that our lives should be united—will be carried out. I will work on faithfully to improve myself, as far as I can be improved. May the end of these months of probation find me more worthy of the great honour of being your daughter and his wife!
Note in another handwriting: “This ended her diary.”
Extract from the first column of The Times, in the June following the dates of above extracts:
“On the 24th inst., at the Parish Church of the Pinewood, F——, Surrey, Hugh Paull, M. D. Lond., M. R. C. S., etc., to Lilia, only child of the late Sir Roderick Pym, Knt.”
CHAPTER VIII.
DIARY OF HUGH PAULL.
May, 18—.
It is positively terrible! to-day I have been married eleven months, and during that time my work has been at a dead standstill.
It is rather my poor darling’s misfortune than her fault. For one with a temperament of passionate concentration such as hers, a totally different up-bringing was called for. School, for instance, and plenty of cheerful, natural society afterwards; she should have mixed freely with girls of her own age, girls like Daisy. This might have balanced her tendency to dwell on one idea to the exclusion of all others.