Though I will tell you the truth; I did not believe he had any chance. Nothing in you has ever given me the slightest indication of it. Your sudden blush when you met him surprised me, also your exclamation—I was not aware you were in the habit of calling him by his Christian name. But that you love this young man, I do not believe.
Some women can be persuaded into love, but you are not of that sort, so far as I can judge. Time will show. You are entirely and absolutely free.
Pardon me, but after the first surprise of this communication I rejoiced that you were thus free. Even were I other than I am—young, handsome, with a large income and everything favourable, you should still, at this crisis, be left exactly as you are, free to elect your own fate, as every woman ought to do. I may be proud, but were I seeking a wife, the only love that ever would satisfy me would be that which was given spontaneously and unsought:—dependent on nothing I gave, but on what I was. If you choose this suitor, my faith in you will convince me that your feelings was such, for him, and I shall be able to say, “Be happy, and God bless you.”
Thus far, I trust, I have written with the steadiness of one who, in either case, has no right to be even surprised—who has nothing whatever to claim, and who accordingly claims nothing.
Treherne will of course answer—and I shall find his letter at the camp when I return, which will be the day after to-morrow. It may bring me—as, indeed, I have expected day by day, being so much the friend of both parties—definite tidings.
Let me stop writing here. My ghosts of old have been haunting me, every day this week; is it because my good angel is vanishing—vanishing—far away? Let me recall your words, which nothing ever can obliterate from my memory—and which in any case I shall bless you for as long as I live.
“I believe that every sin, however great, being repented of and forsaken, is by God, and ought to be by men, altogether forgiven, blotted out and done away?”
A truth, which I hope never to forget, but to set forth continually—I shall have plenty of opportunity, as a gaol-surgeon. Ay, I shall probably live and die as a poor gaol-surgeon.
And you?
“The children of Alice call Bartrum father.”