right to come back
and find my good looks entirely wasted away. I would beg my uncle and
aunt, or my brother, to come and see me, but I do not like to complain of
my loneliness to them, and indeed loneliness is the least of my
sufferings. But what is he, doing--what is it that keeps him away? It
is this ever-recurring question, and the horrible suggestions it raises,
that distract me.

July 3rd.--My last bitter letter has wrung from him an answer at last,
and a rather longer one than usual; but still I don't know what to make
of it. He playfully abuses me for the gall and vinegar of my latest
effusion, tells me I can have no conception of the multitudinous
engagements that keep him away, but avers that, in spite of them all, he
will assuredly be with me before the close of next week; though it is
impossible for a man so circumstanced as he is to fix the precise day of
his return: meantime he exhorts me to the exercise of patience, 'that
first of woman's virtues,' and desires me to remember the saying,
'Absence makes the heart grow fonder,' and comfort myself with the
assurance that the longer he stays away the better he shall love me when
he returns; and till he does return, he begs I will continue to write to
him constantly, for, though he is sometimes too idle and often too busy
to answer my letters as they come, he likes to receive them daily; and if
I fulfil my threat of punishing his seeming neglect by ceasing to write,
he shall be so angry that he will do his utmost to forget me. He adds
this piece of intelligence respecting poor Milicent Hargrave:

'Your little friend Milicent is likely, before long, to follow your
example, and take upon her the yoke of matrimony in conjunction with a
friend of mine. Hattersley, you know, has not yet fulfilled his direful
threat of throwing his precious person away on the first old maid that
chose to evince a tenderness for him; but he still preserves a resolute
determination to see himself a married man before the year is out.
"Only," said he to me, "I must have somebody that will let me have my own
way in everything--not like your wife, Huntingdon: she is a charming
creature, but she looks as if she had a will of her own, and could play
the vixen upon occasion" (I thought "you're right there, man," but I
didn't say so). "I must have some good, quiet soul that will let me just
do what I like and go where I like, keep at home or stay away, without a
word of reproach or co