You will understand all
this and make allowance for me. Write to me immediately, and relieve, if
possible, my intense solicitude. At all events, let me know the truth,
and look it in the face as soon as may be. Any reality is better than
suspense. Yet I must 'hope against hope,' or surrender wholly. I have
not time to write another line. My business is imperative, or I should
certainly retrace my steps.
"Yours eternally, Wentworth."
The man who wrote this letter was capable of condensing in a few calm
words a world of passion, whether he spoke or wrote them; but he had
governed his pen carefully in his agonizing uncertainty. It was yet to
be determined when he penned these lines whether he should be
considered a lover addressing his mistress, or an uncle writing to his
niece, and in this bitter perplexity he commanded his inclinations to
the side of principle.
I wept with tears of joy and thankfulness above this constrained
epistle--I pressed it to my heart, my lips, a thousand times, in the
quiet hours of night, in the moments of retirement my jailer granted me.
The child Ernie alone saw and wondered at these manifestations of which
I first saw the extravagance through his solemn imitations thereof,
which yet made me catch him rapturously in my arms and kiss him a
thousand times, until he put me aside, at last, with decorous dignity,
as one transcending privilege.
Pages:
450
451
452
453
454
455
456
457
458
459
460
461
462
463
464
465
466
467
468
469
470
471
472
473
474