"I'm so helpless, Jane." I put all the despair I could into my voice.
For after all, if they were going to talk about my private Affairs
behind my back, I felt that they might as well have something to talk
about. As Jane's second couzin once removed is in this school and as
Jane will probably write her all about it, I hope this Theme is read
aloud in class, so she will get it all straight. Jane is imaginative and
may have a wrong idea of things.
"Don't give in. Let them bully you. They can't really do anything. And
they're scared. Leila is positively sick."
"I've promised to write and break it off," I said in a tence tone.
"If he really loves you," said Jane, "the letter won't matter." There
was a thrill in her voice. Had I not been uneasy at my deciet, I to
would have thrilled.
Some fresh muffins came in just then and I was starveing. But I waved
them away, and stood staring at the fire.
I am writing all of this as truthfully as I can. I am not defending
myself. What I did I was driven to, as any one can see. It takes a real
shock to make the average Familey wake up to the fact that the youngest
daughter is not the Familey baby at seventeen. All I was doing was
furnishing the shock. If things turned out badly, as they did, it
was because I rather overdid the thing. That is all. My motives were
perfectly ireproachible.
Well, they fell on the muffins like pigs, and I could hardly stand it.
So I wandered into the den, and it occurred to me to write the letter
then. I felt that they all expected me to do something anyhow.
If I had never written the wretched letter things would be better now.
As I say, I overdid. But everything had gone so smoothly all day that I
was decieved. But the real reason was a new set of furs. I had secured
the dresses and the promise of the necklace on a Poem and a Photograph,
and I thought that a good love letter might bring a muff. It all shows
that it does not do to be grasping.
HAD I NOT WRITTEN THE LETTER, THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN NO TRADGEDY.
But I wrote it and if I do say it, it was a LETTER. I commenced it
"Darling," and I said I was mad to see him, and that I would always love
him. But I told him that the Familey objected to him, and that this was
to end everything between us. They had started the phonograph in the
library, and were playing "The Rosary." So I ended with a verse from
that. It was really a most affecting letter. I almost wept over it
myself, because, if there had been a Harold, it would have broken his
Heart.