Tossed by these conflicting thoughts, jaded by this incessant and racking anxiety, at last I sent a few lines which I had copied out several times—for sometimes a word had seemed to me too cold, or too abrupt, too like, or too unlike those which were struggling to escape from my heart and from my pen, or else my tears had stained the paper.
In conclusion, I said, "If, on his dying bed, my uncle names me, do not ask him to say 'God bless her!' but 'God forgive her.'"
I also wrote to Mrs. Middleton, and when these two letters were gone, I felt relieved.
The state in which I lived during the next few days was strange. In the midst of London I was in perfect solitude. Rather than forbid the servants to let Henry in, I gave a general order to deny me to every one, without exception.
Early in the morning, I drove into the country for some hours, and the rest of the day I spent in my back drawing-room buried in thought, and alternately giving way to the gloomiest anticipations, or the most vague and groundless visions of future happiness.
Every day I sent a servant to inquire after Alice; and the report of her continued to be favourable.
On the third day after Edward's departure, and after Henry had made several fruitless attempts to see me, a letter was brought to me, and I immediately felt it was from him. My first impulse was to seize a cover and enclose it back to him, without a word of explanation; but, on cooler reflection, I determined to write to him.
Edward had not forbidden me to do so; and to explain my present conduct, was the only chance of keeping up that power over him, on which so much depended. I therefore wrote as fellows:—
"The crisis of my fate is come. Henceforward, if I take one more step in the downward course in which I have been so cruelly entangled, I am lost for ever. If you feel any of that regard for me which you have so long professed, I need not make any comments upon the fact which I now disclose to you.
"The notes which at different times I have sent you, and which so fatally misrepresent our relative positions, have been sent to Edward; and this letter, of which I inclose you a copy, is the result. I will not attempt to make you understand what I have suffered—what I suffer. I dare not see you; I dare not receive a letter from you; and yet, before Edward's return, I must; for there is an oath which you once imposed upon me, which must be cancelled—you must absolve me from it, if you do not wish to drive me to despair—to perjury on the one hand, or to a life of hopeless misery on the other.