coil as before. It is no use saying anything
if I am not candid. I avow then, that on this occasion, predisposed
as I was to regard him very favourably, his manners and his personal
presence scarcely pleased me more than at the first interview. He
gave me a book at parting, requesting in his brief way that I would
keep it for his sake, and adding hastily, "I shall hope to hear from
you in India--your letters _have_ been and _will_ be a greater
refreshment than you can think or I can tell."

'And so he is gone; and stern and abrupt little man as he is--too
often jarring as are his manners--his absence and the exclusion of
his idea from my mind leave me certainly with less support and in
deeper solitude than before.

'You see, dear Nell, though we are still precisely on the same
level--_you_ are not isolated. I feel that there is a certain
mystery about this transaction yet, and whether it will ever be
cleared up to me I do not know; however, my plain duty is to wean my
mind from the subject, and if possible to avoid pondering over it.
In his conversation he seemed studiously to avoid reference to Mr.
Smith individually, speaking always of the "house"--the "firm." He
seemed throughout quite as excited and nervous as when I first saw
him. I feel that in his way he has a regard for me--a regard which I
cannot bring myself entirely to reciprocate in kind, and yet its
withdrawal leaves a painful blank.'

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

'_April_ 9_th_, 1851.

'DEAR NELL,--Thank you for your kind note; it was just like you to
write it _though_ it was your school-day. I never knew you to let a
slight impediment stand in the way of a friendly action.

'Certainly I shall not soon forget last Friday, and _never_, I think,
the evening and night succeeding that morning and afternoon. Evils
seldom come singly. And soon after Mr. Taylor was gone, papa, who
had been better, grew much worse. He went to bed early, and was very
sick and ill for an hour; and when at last he began to doze, and I
left him, I came down to the dining-room with a sense of weight,
fear, and desolation hard to express and harder to endure. A wish
that you were with me _did_ cross my mind, but I repulsed it as a
most selfish wish; indeed, it was