It need hardly be said that the woman by whom these letters were written
had no thought that they would be read by anyone but the person to whom
they were addressed. But a request, conveyed under circumstances which
the writer herself would have regarded as all-commanding, urges that
they should now be given to the world; and, so far as is possible with a
due regard to the claims of privacy, what is here printed presents the
letters as they were first written in their complete form and sequence.
Very little has been omitted which in any way bears upon the devotion of
which they are a record. A few names of persons and localities have been
changed; and several short notes (not above twenty in all), together
with some passages bearing too intimately upon events which might be
recognized, have been left out without indication of their omission.
It was a necessary condition to the present publication that the
authorship of these letters should remain unstated. Those who know will
keep silence; those who do not, will not find here any data likely to
guide them to the truth.
The story which darkens these pages cannot be more fully indicated while
the feelings of some who are still living have to be consulted; nor will
the reader find the root of the tragedy explained in the letters
themselves. But one thing at least may be said as regards the principal
actors--that to the memory of neither of them does any blame belong.
They were equally the victims of circumstances, which came whole out of
the hands of fate and remained, so far as one of the two was concerned,
a mystery to the day of her death.