is can't
last! it is exceptional weather, and, up to the last few days, has
been divine. And then, after all we talk of frost, my bedroom, which
has no fireplace, shows not an English sign on the window, and the
air is not _metallic_ as in England. The sun, too, is so hot that
the women are seen walking with fur capes and parasols, a curious
combination.

I hope you had your visit from Mr. Chorley, and that you both had the
usual pleasure from it. Indeed I _am_ touched by what you tell me, and
was touched by his note to my husband, written in the first surprise;
and because Robert has the greatest regard for him, besides my own
personal reasons, I do count him in the forward rank of our friends.
You will hear that he has obliged us by accepting a trusteeship to
a settlement, forced upon me in spite of certain professions or
indispositions of mine; but as my husband's gifts, I had no right, it
appeared, by refusing it to place him in a false position for the sake
of what dear Mr. Kenyon calls my 'crotchets.' Oh, dear Mr. Kenyon! His
kindness and goodness to us have been past thinking of, past thanking
for; we can only fall into silence. He has thrust his hand into the
fire for us by writing to papa himself, by taking up the management of
my small money-matters when nearer hands let them drop, by justifying
us with the whole weight of his personal influence; all this in the
very face of his own habits and susceptibilities. He has resolved
that I shall not miss the offices of father, brother, friend, nor the
tenderness and sympathy of them all. And this man is called a mere man
of the world, and would be called so rightly if the world were a place
for angels. I shall love him dearly and gratefully to my last breath;
we both shall....

Robert and I are deep in the fourth month of wedlock; there has not
been a shadow between us, nor a _word_ (and I have observed that all
married people confess to _words_), and that the only change I can lay
my finger on in him is simply and clearly an increase of affection.
Now I need not say it if I did not please, and I should not please,
you know, to tell a story. The truth is, that I who always did
certainly believe in love, yet was as great a sceptic as you about the
evidences thereof, and having held twenty times that Jacob's serving
fourteen years for Rachel was not too long by fourteen days, I was
not a likely person (with my loathing dread of marriage as a loveless
state, and abs