'I put these foolish-sounding trifling things down because I want to bring back to myself the assurance that Thornton was always like a brother to me.
'The first thing that I can remember as troubling the busy tranquillity of my school life was my coming to understand why aunt Catherine and papa always had so much to talk about, and why the talking never did them any good. I was growing up into a staid little person, as Alston says I am now, when the word "difficulties" began to be familiar to me. It never has the sad and hopeless meaning in America that it has in the old countries of Europe, I am told; but "difficulties" are not easy or pleasant anywhere, and papa was not a man to bear them well. He gave way very much, and I used to tell Thornton about it, and he and I used to consult together and discuss what could be done.
'Thornton had only one solution to offer; it was that he should marry me. This, he said, would save a great deal of expense, by taking me completely off my father's hands. But I saw that that plan would not be of much use, because some one must have given us something to live upon, and that some one would certainly not have been Thornton's father; for he was very poor, and Thornton was studying as hard as he could, that he might be able to go into business and assist his father. So that idea did not come to anything; and when we were a year older, and the "difficulties" were a year worse, Thornton got a situation in New York, and he and I parted.
'It was very hard--very hard indeed--to part: I don't mean to deny that or to make any mistake with myself about it; but I do wish to assert most distinctly, though only for my own satisfaction, that there never was any engagement between Thornton and me.
'I know Thornton loved me as a man loves a woman whom he would make the partner of his life--as Alston loves me, but without Alston's curious notion of the essential difference and distance between men and women. Thornton, though a highly-cultivated man, thought me perfectly capable of understanding the best of his studies, if not of following their details, of sharing his interest in every sense; but Alston could not think thus, and though he is most tender and indulgent, he is not confidential. I should be the most ungrateful of women were I to murmur; but I do wish sometimes for a little more confidence, even at the cost of a little less indulgence.
'But I am wandering from my intention to record exactly what was the state of things between Thornton and me when our schooldays came to an end, and he went to take a small post with but poor pay at New York. I know that he loved me--that was frankly acknowledged between us; but there was no thought that we should marry, then or ever. I loved him too; but not with love such as I have heard and read of, but have never known; love which must mean misery, I think, because it causes one to sacrifice duty, and common sense and all one's obligations towards other people, to its own imperious claims. I knew that I could not be Thornton's wife without harming him and all concerned; and that, however much I might believe that it would be the happiest fate to be his wife, happiness of that particular kind, was not destined to be mine. I do not say our parting was not sad, but I am quite safe in saying that it was not bitter.
'A little while after Thornton went away to New York I first saw Alston. He came to Holland Mills on some business connected with papa's affairs, and merely in a business capacity. My father and he had not met previously, and we knew nothing of him except that he was a prosperous merchant of New York, and I think we had a little of the sense of shrinking and depression--I mean aunt Catherine and I had--which comes to unprosperous people in the sight of those whose lot is far different. A very little time, a very brief acquaintance with Mr. Griswold, did away with such a feeling as this, and turned him into a friend.
'My father took to him from the first, and as to aunt Catherine, I never knew her to like any man who was not a minister so much, or to believe in him so implicitly. He brought relief and cheerfulness with him, that was plain, and at first all he did was quite for papa's sake. After a while, he began to care very much about me, and, like a gentleman, as he is in everything, he told me that he loved me, and hoped I might in time come to love him well enough to marry him, but that I must not regard the matter as having anything whatever to do with the efforts he was making on my father's behalf. He would continue them as zealously as ever, whether I decided for or against him.
'I can never forget how Alston appeared that day. I had not thought about loving him, though of course I knew, as every woman knows such things, how he felt towards me; but when he spoke this to me, I felt that it would not be hard to love such a man, and that it would be a blessed fate to become his wife.
'He did not press me for an answer then; he said I must consider it until his next visit, and I promised him that I would do so. But before his next visit, ah, what a change had fallen on us all! My father had met with a terrible accident in the mill; he was hopelessly injured, and when Alston came it was to see him on his deathbed.