This is the part of our interview she will not have repeated to you.
I was due at Hillyn when she was preparing to go: Aunt N—— came in, and I left her to do the honors while I slipped on my habit. I rode by your mother's carriage as far as the Greenway, where we branched. I suppose that is what her phrase means that you quote about my "making a trophy of her," and marching her a prisoner across the borders before all the world!
I do like her: she is worth winning.—Can one say warmer of a future mother-in-law who stands hostile?
All the same it was an ordeal. I believe I have wept since: for Benjy scratched my door often yesterday evening, and looked most wistful when I came out. Merely paltry self-love, dearest:—I am so little accustomed to not being—liked.
I think she will be more gracious in her own house. I have her formal word that I am to come. Soon, not too soon, I will come over; and you shall meet me and take me to see her. There is something in her opposition that I can't fathom: I wondered twice was lunacy her notion: she looked at me so hard.
My mother's seclusion and living apart from us was not on that account. I often saw her: she was very dear and sweet to me, and had quiet eyes the very reverse of a person mentally deranged. My father, I know, went to visit her when she lay dying; and I remember we all wore mourning. My uncle has told me they had a deep regard for each other: but disagreed, and were independent enough to choose living apart.
I do not remember my father ever speaking of her to us as children: but I am sure there was no state of health to be concealed.
Last night I was talking to Aunt N—— about her. "A very dear woman," she told me, "but your father was never so much alive to her worth as the rest of us." Of him she said, "A dear, fine fellow: but not at all easy to get on with." Him, of course, I have a continuous recollection of, and "a fine fellow" we did think him. My mother comes to me more rarely, at intervals.
Don't talk me down your mother's throat: but tell her as much as she cares to know of this. I am very proud of my "stock" which she thinks "poor"!
Dear, how much I have written on things which can never concern us finally, and so should not ruffle us while they last! Hold me in your heart always, always; and the world may turn adamant to me for aught I care! Be in my dreams to-night!