"You see, I tell you this because I want you to know exactly what I have
been doing these five years, and that I have never thought of marrying
Tom or anybody. I did not think I could. I felt that if I belonged to
anybody it was you, and I cannot have Tom; and father was very angry and
taunted me with living on Tom's money, which I did not know before, and
he accidentally let out about the marriage settlement, and that hurt me
worse than the other.
"Oh, Guy, how can I give it up? Surely there must be a way, now I am of
age. I was so humiliated about it, and after all that passed between
father and Tom and me I could not stay in Berlin and never be sure whose
money was paying for my bread, and when I heard that Madame Lafarcade, a
French lady, who had spent the winter in Berlin, was wanting an English
governess for her children, I went to her, and, as the result, am here
at this beautiful country-seat, just out of the city, earning my own
living and feeling so proud to do it; only, Guy, there is an ache in my
heart, a heavy, throbbing pain which will not leave me day or night, and
this is how it came there.
"Mother wrote that you were about to marry Miss Hamilton. Letters from
home brought her the news, which she thinks is true. Oh, Guy, it is not,
it cannot be true! You must not go quite away from me now just as I am
coming back to you. For, Guy, I am--or rather, I have come, and a great
love, such as I never felt before, fills me full almost to bursting. I
always liked you, Guy; but when we were married I did not know what it
was to love--to feel my pulses quicken as they do just now at thought of
you. If I had, how happy I could have made you, but I was a silly little
girl, and married life was distasteful to me, and I was willing to be
free, though always, way down in my heart, was something which protested
against it, and if you knew just how I was influenced and led on
insensibly to assent, you would not blame me so much. The word divorce
had an ugly sound to me, and I did not like it, and I have always felt
as if bound to you just the same. It would not be right for me to marry
Tom, even if I wanted to, which I do not. I am yours, Guy--only yours,
and all these years I have studied and improved for your sake, without
any fixed idea, perhaps, as to what I expected or hoped. But when Tom
spoke the last time it came to me suddenly what I was keeping myself
for, and, just as a great body of water, when freed from its prison
walls, rolls rapidly down a green meadow, so did a mighty love for you
take possession of me and permeate my whole being until every nerve
quivered for joy, and when Tom was gone I went away alone and cried more
for my new happiness, I am afraid, than for him, poor fellow. And yet I
pitied him, too; as I could not stay in Berlin after that I came away to
earn money enough to take me back to you. For I am coming, or I was
before I heard that dreadful news which I cannot believe.