"Dear Gilbert," he read. Instantly he was alarmed, for this was not the way she generally began her letters to him. "I have changed my mind," ran the words; his alarm increased. But when he next came to the words, "Our engagement must be broken off. I intend marrying Mr. Bennet," a feeling of stupefaction overcame him. He read the short letter over and over again in a mechanical sort of way, hardly taking in its meaning.
"'I have changed my mind,'" he repeated to himself. "'Our engagement must be broken off. I intend marrying Mr. Bennet.'"
The thing was so sudden that at first it stunned him—he could not believe it.
But there it was in black and white, in Kitty's own writing.
"I have changed my mind!"
There was no mistaking that.
"Our engagement must be broken off. I intend marrying Mr. Bennet," she wrote.
These were her words, and there was no getting away from them.
So everything was at an end between them!
More than that, Kitty was to marry Bennet!