"But there is an engagement between us, as you know full well. I was a hound to tell Mr. Avison that there wasn't."
"An engagement of a sort," replied Mrs. Dersion meaningly; then after a moment's pause, she went on: "It was only a half-and-half provisional arrangement, look at it whichever way you will. At the end of a year either of you could cry off that might wish to do so; and now that the course it is to your interest to follow is put so plainly before you, surely you would not----?"
"I repeat it, I was a hound to tell Mr. Avison what I did. Hermia Rivers is the most charming girl I know, and I'm far from sure that I want to break with her."
"Frank, you are a fool, and I have no patience with you," said Mrs. Derison, in coldly contemptuous tones, as she got up and left the room.
But it was only to return to the charge a little later on. She did not in the least doubt that, in the long run, her stronger will should overmaster Frank's weak one, and that she should ultimately carry her point. Thus it fell out that, in the course of the next day but one after Frank's interview with Mr. Avison, the following letter was received by Miss Rivers:
"My Dear Hermia,
"Never before have I had so hard a task as the one which confronts me to-day, and I scarcely know in what terms to set about it. Pray believe me when I tell you that to me the pain is very keen, though I cannot flatter myself that it will be anything like the same to you. In any case, I trust that what I am about to propose will, in the long run, prove conducive to the happiness of both.
"It is now upwards of a year since you and I entered into a kind of semi-engagement, which by mutual consent was to be kept secret from everyone for the time being, and was to be terminable at the end of twelve months at the option of either or both, unless it should meanwhile have developed into a bond of a much closer and warmer kind.
"Dear Hermia, I now write to offer you your freedom. My feelings towards you have in no wise changed. I still love you as much as ever I did, but I feel that it would be unfair towards you to keep you longer under the bond of an engagement which I see no present prospect of being able to bring to its legitimate conclusion. In brief, I am too poor to marry, and am likely to remain so for an indefinite period. Rather would I keep single forever than allow my wife to deteriorate into one of those household drudges of which we can see so many specimens around us. That sort of thing I could not reconcile either to my conscience or my feelings; neither am I selfish enough to wish you to wear out the best years of your life in waiting for one who, the longer he lives, the more unworthy he feels himself to be of the great treasure of your love.
"I do not know that I can add more, unless it be to say that, should I ever find myself in a position to marry, you would be the one whom I should choose before all the world; and also that my heart still clings to you, and that, in writing as I am now, I feel that I am cutting myself adrift from all that has been brightest and best in my life.