herefore you must be a cripple for life. But it is not
so; and such thoughts, if not wicked, are at least wrong.
I would that it had been otherwise. I would that you had
not met your cousin.--

"So would not I," said Mary to herself; but as she said it she knew
that she was wrong. Of course it would be for her welfare, and for
his too, if his heart was as hers, that she should never have seen
him.--

But because you have met him, and have fancied that you
and he would be all in all together, you will be wrong
indeed if you let that fancy ruin your future life. Or
if you encourage yourself to feel that, because you
have loved one man from whom you are necessarily parted,
therefore you should never allow yourself to become
attached to another, you will indeed be teaching yourself
an evil lesson. I think I can understand the arguments
with which you may perhaps endeavour to persuade your
heart that its work of loving has been done, and should
not be renewed; but I am quite sure that they are false
and inhuman. The Indian, indeed, allows herself to be
burned through a false idea of personal devotion; and if
that idea be false in a widow, how much falser is it in
one who has never been a wife.

You know what have ever been our wishes. They are the same
now as heretofore; and his constancy is of that nature,
that nothing will ever change it. I am persuaded that it
would have been unchanged, even if you had married your
cousin, though in that case he would have been studious to
keep out of your way. I do not mean to press his claims at
present. I have told him that he should be patient, and
that if the thing be to him as important as he makes it,
he should be content to wait. He replied that he would
wait. I ask for no word from you at present on this
subject. It will be much better that there should be no
word. But it is right that you should know that there is
one who loves you with a devotion which nothing can alter.

I will only add to this my urgent prayer that you will not
make too much to yourself of your own misfortune, or allow
yourself to think that because this and that have taken
place, therefore everything must be over. It is hard to
say who makes the greatest mistakes, women who treat their
own selves with too great a reverence, or they who do so
with too little.

Frank sends his kin