re her, is to make her understand that
she is anything but worthless. She has recently followed my brother's
lead, and spoken of herself, but with a touch of scorn. This morning,
while the clear frosty sky continues, we were to have started for an old
castle lying toward Wales; and I think the idea of a castle must have
struck her imagination, and forced some internal contrast on her mind. I
am repeating my brother's suggestion--she seemed more than usually
impressed with an idea that she was of no value to anybody. She asked why
she should go anywhere, and dropped into a chair, begging to be allowed
to stay in a darkened room. My brother has some strange intuition of her
state of mind. She has lost any power she may have had of grasping
abstract ideas. In what I conceived to be play, he told her that many
would buy her even now. She appeared to be speculating on this, and then
wished to know how much those persons would consider her to be worth, and
who they were. Nor did it raise a smile on her face to hear my brother
mention Jews, and name an absolute sum of money; but, on the contrary,
after evidently thinking over it, she rose up, and said that she was
ready to go. I write fully to you, telling you these things, that you may
see she is at any rate eager not to despair, and is learning, much as a
child might learn it, that it need not be.

"Believe me, that I will in every way help to dispossess your mind of the
remorse now weighing upon you, as far as it shall be within my power to
do so.

"Mr. Runningbrook has been invited by my brother to come and be her
companion. They have a strong affection for one another. He is a true
poet, full of reverence for a true woman."

[Wilfrid to Georgiana Ford:]

"I cannot thank you enough. When I think of her I am unmanned; and if I
let my thoughts fall back upon myself, I am such as you saw me that night
in Devon--helpless, and no very presentable figure. But you do not
picture her to me. I cannot imagine whether her face has changed; and,
pardon me, were I writing to you alone, I could have faith that the
delicate insight and angelic nature of a woman would not condemn my
desire to realize before my eyes the state she has fallen to. I see her
now under a black shroud. Have her features changed? I cannot remember
one--only at an interval her eyes. Does she look into the faces of people
as she used? Or does she stare carelessly away? Softly between the eyes,
is what I meant.