“Soften her as much as you can, Charlie. She is all tenderness now for her child; but the moment she has got her again, she may grow severe. After all, the poor girl will need her kindness. I daresay she has fretted a great deal whilst thinking of us all. She will have missed her comforts, her pretty bed-room, our kisses in the morning. Eh? shouldn’t she be kindly received?”
“Yes, and she will be, I am sure,” I replied, moved by the tears that sprang to his eyes.
He squeezed my hand, bade God bless me, and left the bank.
There being nothing to do, I thought I could not better occupy my time than by writing to Theresa. So down I sat at my uncle’s desk, and wrote four pages. There was a great deal to tell: Conny’s flight to be related, and a funeral oration to be delivered over my love. “I may tell _you_,” I said, “that I am not so broken-hearted as I ought to be. I am pained by her conduct for her father’s and mother’s sake, but has anybody a right to expect me to have any personal feelings in the matter, beyond a proper sense of gratefulness that her pretty face and capricious smiles can no longer keep me awake o’ nights, nor prevent me from enjoying my food? Ah, Theresa! you may indeed value yourself on your perceptions. I am afraid I never really loved Conny. How will this confession affect me with you? I beg and implore that you won’t consider mine a fickle nature. I could be true and faithful as Abelard, could I but find a girl who would be my Eloïsa. I made a mistake. I admired Conny, and mistook the delight with which I used to watch her young face and profound eyes for love. I won’t pretend to think that I could have exhibited my present fortitude, were it not for you. There is not a quality that goes to the making of my mind, that would not have smarted and throbbed under this elopement. Practically, I have been snubbed, sneered at, utilised, dropped, cut, disliked, morally kicked, and hopelessly sat upon; all which unpardonable treatment I might laugh at, had Conny been the only insulter; but to suffer such indignities at the hands of Mr. Curling!--Theresa, let your pride bleed for me. Let me know I have your sympathy. The briefest assurance that your opinion of me is not lowered because I haven’t broken my heart over Conny, will give me all the strength I need to support the very crushing sense of contempt that visits me, whenever I reflect on their duplicity and my humiliation.” And so on, and so on.