an give any answer with
which you will not have a right to complain. If it be so,
I can only ask your pardon for the injury I am doing you.

Marriage is a great change in life,--much greater to me
than to you, who will remain in your old house, will keep
your old pursuits, will still be your own master, and will
change in nothing,--except in this, that you will have a
companion who probably may not be all that you expect.
But I must change everything. It will be to me as though
I were passing through a grave to a new world. I shall
see nothing that I have been accustomed to see, and must
abandon all the ways of life that I have hitherto adopted.
Of course I should have thought of this before I accepted
you; and I did think of it. I made up my mind that, as I
truly loved you, I would risk the change;--that I would
risk it for your sake and for mine, hoping that I might
add something to your happiness, and that I might secure
my own. Dear John, do not suppose that I despair that it
may be so; but, indeed, you must not hurry me. I must tune
myself to the change that I have to make. What if I should
wake some morning after six months living with you, and
tell you that the quiet of your home was making me mad?

You must not ask me again till the winter shall have
passed away. If in the meantime I shall find that I have
been wrong, I will humbly confess that I have wronged
you, and ask you to forgive me. And I will freely admit
this. If the delay which I now purpose is so contrary
to your own plans as to make your marriage, under such
circumstances, not that which you had expected, I know
that you are free to tell me so, and to say that our
engagement shall be over. I am well aware that I can have
no right to bind you to a marriage at one period which you
had only contemplated as to take place at another period.
I think I may promise that I will obey any wish you may
express in anything,--except in that one thing which you
urged in your last letter.

Kate is going down to Yarmouth with Mrs Greenow, and I
shall see no more of her probably till next year, as she
will be due in Westmoreland after that. George left me at
the door when he brought me home, and declared that he
intended to vanish out of London. Whether in town or out,
he is never to be seen at this period of the year. Papa
offers to g