‘At last the day comes round on which I may write to you. No doubt you were perfectly right to say I must not write oftener than once a fortnight, and I am sure, by doing so, you saved yourself from being fearfully bored; but it makes me wild with impatience sometimes. It is such a comfort to feel as if I were almost speaking to you–to feel that in a few days you will be holding this that I have written in your hand, and that for a time at least you will be obliged to think of me.
‘Since I wrote, something very sad has happened. Poor Mr. Bolton is dead. He died last week, very suddenly, of heart disease. You may imagine that it has been a fearful blow to poor Nita, unhappy as she is already. Even Jerome felt it, I think, or believed he did. Mr. Bolton has always been so good to him, and I defy anyone not to have respected him. It made me very sad, too. I had got so fond of him. Some of my happiest hours were spent with him at Monk’s Gate, helping him with his Italian. He did so want to finish his translation of the “Inferno,” and have it published. Nita liked me to go there. Jerome always wanted her to stay in in the evening, and I think she did not want her father to see how sad she looked sometimes. She is goodness itself, but oh! so altered, so subdued, and so sad! I am sure she knows by some means–though how, I can’t imagine–how dreadfully Jerome had deceived her all the time she thought he loved her. At least, I know that now she knows he does not love her as she loves him, and as he ought to love her. I know I am a fool sometimes. I say such fearfully indiscreet things every now and then. The other day, when Nita told me that she hoped she would have her baby before next winter, I exclaimed, “Oh, Nita, how glad I am! That will make it all right.” She looked at me so strangely for a few minutes, and then burst into tears, and said, “Who knows? who knows? It is as God shall dispose it.” I am glad she can think so. To me it seems very strangely disposed, but then, as you know, I never could say, “Thank God!” for the things that make everyone unhappy all round, and I don’t believe they are providential at all. I believe they happen because people are wicked and selfish. But Nita is very good, though she never talks about it. I know she thinks people don’t have troubles without deserving them, and she is under the impression that she must in some way deserve her troubles, though even she cannot say how.
‘But I was telling you about Mr. Bolton’s death. Everything seems very strange without him. Do you know, only the day before he died he gave me a lovely pearl ring, which he said was to be in remembrance of my kindness to him! How I did cry when I thought of it. And poor Mr. Leyburn, who, I am sure, never will learn when to speak, and when to be silent, said that I ought to be glad, and not sorry, to know that I had been of any comfort to him. Now, did he expect me to burst into a fit of delighted laughter? But of course he means well.
‘Mr. Bolton’s death has made Nita, and I suppose Jerome too, very rich, of course; though I don’t understand anything about the circumstances of it.
‘We are not so quiet here as I should have thought we should be. All the people round ask us out. Just before Mr. Bolton’s death, Jerome and I dined at Mrs. Latheby’s. Nita, of course, was invited too, but she will not go out at present, and she would not let us stay at home. So we went. There was Mrs. Latheby, and her niece, Miss Paulina Bagot–a Roman Catholic heiress, who is intended to marry young Latheby. He was there too, with Father Somerville, who had come with him from Brentwood, Jerome and myself. We were the only heretics. Jerome sang, and I played, and young Mr. Latheby applauded wildly. Then Miss Bagot played, which she does exceedingly well. Mr. Somerville, as usual, made himself very agreeable. He really is one of the most delightful people I ever knew. I know you don’t like him, but I call him charming. Both he and Mrs. Latheby are very polite to us. Mr. Somerville comes a great deal to the Abbey.
‘Nita is like you–she dislikes him. At first when he came she used to sit with him and Jerome, and so did I; but she felt so uncomfortable, she said, that now we always leave them in the library, and we go and sit in the drawing-room. Very often Mr. Leyburn is there too, for he does not like Father Somerville either, and has not the good manners even to pretend to do so, which annoys me very much. Sometimes Mr. Bolton used to come, and then I used to read to him about the savage tribes of South America. We were reading the “Naturalist’s Voyage Round the World,” which Mr. Leyburn brought for us, about the only thing in which his taste is unimpeachable. Of course he listened with respect to that, but all the other books he calls “travellers’ tales.” He professes to go in for natural history himself, or to be, as he calls it, “a bit of a naturalist,” and he was always interrupting our reading, finding fault with the botany, or the zoology, or the something ology of the writers, which is a most exasperating habit. It is so annoying, just as you are reading a thrilling account of something, to be suddenly interrupted, “Incorrect! Where did the fellow get his facts? Not from accurate personal observation, I’ll wager.”
‘Miss Shuttleworth is just as amusing as ever, but I don’t think she has done any thing very remarkable since I last wrote.
‘Jerome still goes to business every day, though I know Nita wants him to give it up. I wonder that Nita never reproaches him! But then he looks almost as miserable as she does. It is a depressing household, dear Sara, though I have nothing to complain of. They let me do anything I like, and I believe I might even come and see you if I chose. But I have learnt a great many things from the troubles I have seen since I came here, and amongst others I have learnt that I am of some comfort to Nita, therefore I will not leave her.
‘I must conclude. You will be tired of all this. Do not be long in writing to me, if it is only two sides of a sheet of paper.
Sara still walked to and fro, but in profound and painful reverie. Her very soul pitied her unhappy little successful rival. She felt as if she would have liked nothing better than to take Nita to her bosom and soothe and comfort her, so intensely she felt for the girl in her pain and desolation. Could she by a word, even by some sacrifice on her own part, have given Nita her husband’s love, and wiped from her mind all knowledge of his past transgressions, how gladly she would have done it! for Sara, in her solitude at Mein Genügen, had scaled higher moral summits than she herself knew–she thought she had not completely cast away the old love, or the effects of it–she did not realise that the substance of it had been burnt away; what remained was a shadow, a heap of ashes, retaining the shape of that which was in reality consumed. It was well that she saw the evil which remained, and not the good which was accomplished, else had she been in danger of succumbing to that ‘palsy of self-satisfaction’ which has a trick of seizing upon and blighting the finest natures.