“If everything is to be put down one does, I cried long and bitterly to find I had written that I must pray to God against him.”
“Dec. 14th.—It is plain he never means to come again. Mamma says nothing, but that is out of pity for me: I have not read her dear face all these years for nothing. She is beginning to think him unworthy, when she thinks of him at all.”
“There is a mystery; a dreadful mystery; may he not be as mystified, too, and perhaps tortured like me with doubts and suspicions? They say he is pale and dejected. Poor thing!
“But then, oh why not come to me and say so? Shall I write to him? No, I will cut my hand off sooner.”
“Dec. 16th.—A blessed letter from Jane. She says, 'Letter writing on ordinary subjects is a sad waste of time and very unpardonable among His people.' And so it is; and my weak hope, daily disappointed, that there may be something in her letter, only shows how inferior I am to my beloved friend. She says, 'I should like to fix another hour for us two to meet at the Throne together: will five o'clock suit you? We dine at six; but I am never more than half an hour dressing.'
“The friendship of this saint, and her bright example, is what Heaven sends me in infinite mercy and goodness to sooth my aching heart a little: for him I shall never see again.
“I have seen him this very evening.”
“It was a beautiful night: I went to look at—the world to come I call it—for I believe the redeemed are to inhabit those very stars hereafter, and visit them all in turn—and this world I now find is a world of sorrow and disappointment—so I went on the balcony to look at a better one: and oh it seemed so holy, so calm, so pure, that heavenly world I gazed and stretched my hands towards it for ever so little of its holiness and purity; and, that moment I heard a sigh. I looked, and there stood a gentleman just outside our gate, and it was him. I nearly screamed, and my heart beat so. He did not see me: for I had come out softly, and his poor head was down, down upon his breast; and he used to carry it so high, a little, little, while ago—too high some said; but not I. I looked, and my misgivings melted away, it flashed on me as if one of those stars had written it with its own light in my heart—'There stands Grief; not Guilt.' And before I knew what I was about I had whispered 'Alfred!' The poor boy started and ran towards me: but stopped short and sighed again. My heart yearned; but it was not for me to make advances to him, after his unkindness: so I spoke to him as coldly as ever I could, and I said, 'You are unhappy.'
“He looked up to me, and then I saw even by that light that he is enduring a bitter, bitter struggle: so pale, so worn, so dragged!—Now how many times have I cried, this last month? more than in all the rest of my life a great deal.—'Unhappy!' he said; 'I must be a contemptible thing if I was not unhappy.' And then he asked me should not I despise him if he was happy. I did not answer that: but I asked him why he was unhappy. And when I had, I was half frightened; for he never evades a question the least bit.
“He held his head higher still, and said, 'I am unhappy because I cannot see the path of honour.'