ows with mournful clearness. There had seemed a doubt whether all
these letters must be regarded as of one series, or whether, more
correctly, it was to be assumed that Dorothy and Temple had their
lovers' quarrels, for the well-understood pleasure of kissing friends
again. But you will agree that these lovers were not altogether as other
lovers are, that their troubles were too real and too many for their
love to need the stimulus of constant April shower quarrels; and these
letters are very serious in their sadness, imprinting themselves in the
mind after constant reading as landmarks clearly defining the course and
progress of an unusual event in these lovers' history--a
misunderstanding.

The letters are written at Christmastide, 1653. Dorothy had returned
from London to Chicksands, and either had not seen Temple or he had left
London hurriedly whilst she was there. There is a letter lost. Dorothy's
youngest brother is lately dead; her niece has left her; her companion
Jane is sick; her father, growing daily weaker and weaker, was sinking
into his grave before her eyes. No bright chance seemed to open before
her, and their marriage seemed an impossibility. For a moment she loses
faith, not in Temple, but in fortune; faith once gone, hope, missing her
comrade, flies away in search of her. She is alone in the old house with
her dying father, and with her brother pouring his unkind gossip into
her unwilling ear, whilst the sad long year draws slowly to its close,
and there is no sign of better fortune for the lovers; can we wonder,
then, that Dorothy, lonely and unaided, pacing in the damp garden
beneath the bare trees, with all the bright summer changed into decay,
lost faith and hope?

Temple, when Dorothy's thoughts reach him, must have replied with some
impatience. There are stories, too, set about concerning her good name
by one Mr. B., to disturb Temple. Temple can hardly have given credence
to these, but he may have complained of them to Dorothy, who is led to
declare, "I am the most unfortunate woman breathing, but I was never
false," though she forgives her lover "all those strange thoughts he has
had" of her. Whatever were the causes of the quarrel, or rather the
despondency, we shall never know accurately. Dorothy was not the woman
to vapour for months about "an early and a quiet grave." When she writes
this it is written in the deepest earnest of despair; when this mood is
over it is over for ever, and we