LETTERS TO A FIANCÉE.
Dear Gladys,—I am so glad that in spite of your many engagements—one of them being an engagement to be married—you found time to write to me again at last. You say little about your fiancé, but that, after all, is of small importance. I approve of engagements in the abstract; I know of no amusement more harmless nor more agreeable for a young girl; and from my own experience I shall be delighted to assist you, with any little hints in my power, towards making the course of true love run as smoothly as possible.
You have not described Arthur very clearly—(I am supposing, for the sake of argument, that his name is Arthur; in your agitation you did not tell me his name, but I think you are the sort of girl who would be in love with the sort of man who would be called Arthur)—you have not, I say, told me much about him; but from your letter I gather the following suggestive facts:—
I. You were made for each other.
A simple and self-evident proposition—it needs no comment.
II. He never loved anyone but you! Except once, many years ago; and he has told you all about it quite frankly. She was unworthy of him; and married Another.
Now I have no doubt whatever, Gladys, that you are quite jealous of this person of whom he has told you, quite frankly and who was unworthy of him, and married Another. I wish I could convince you of the fact that there is no one in the world so little dangerous to you as the person to whom he has grown indifferent. Fear rather the girls he doesn't know, the women he will meet, the charming people to whom he has just been introduced, the cousins he has never made love to! The past can not be the rival of the present: the future may. But this is a subject on which argument is of no avail. Reason retires, snubbed: and retrospective sensitiveness remains. Now come his faults:—
III. He does not like the way you do your hair, and he has a book of dried flowers with their names written above them in Latin and violet ink, and he shows them to you when he comes to tea.