on there was that I should justify it as far as I could, and with as
much frankness (which was a part of my gratitude to you) as was possible
from a woman to a woman. Always I have felt that you have believed in me
and loved me, and, for the sake of the past and of the present, your
affection and your esteem are more to me than I could afford to lose,
even in these changed and happy circumstances. So I thank you once more,
my dear kind friends, I thank you both--I never shall forget your
goodness. I feel it, of course, the more deeply, in proportion to the
painful disappointment in other quarters.... Am I bitter? The feeling,
however, passes while I write it out, and my own affection for everybody
will wait patiently to be 'forgiven' in the proper form, when everybody
shall be at leisure properly. Assuredly, in the meanwhile, however, my
case is not to be classed with other cases--what happened to me could
not have happened, perhaps, with any other family in England.... I hate
and loathe everything too which is clandestine--we _both_ do, Robert and
I; and the manner the whole business was carried on in might have
instructed the least acute of the bystanders. The flowers standing
perpetually on my table for the last two years were brought there by one
hand, as everybody knew; and really it would have argued an excess of
benevolence in an unmarried man with quite enough resources in London,
to pay the continued visits he paid to me without some strong motive
indeed. Was it his fault that he did not associate with everybody in the
house as well as with me? He desired it; but no--that was not to be. The
endurance of the pain of the position was not the least proof of his
attachment to me. How I thank you for believing in him--how grateful it
makes me! He will justify to the uttermost that faith. We have been
married two months, and every hour has bound me to him more and more; if
the beginning was well, still better it is now--that is what he says to
me, and I say back again day by day. Then it is an 'advantage' to have
an inexhaustible companion who talks wisdom of all things in heaven and
earth, and shows besides as perpetual a good humour and gaiety as if he
were--a fool, shall I say? or a considerable quantity more, perhaps. As
to our domestic affairs, it is not to _my_ honour and glory that the
'bills' are made up every week and paid more regularly 'than bard
beseems,' while dear Mrs. Jameson laughs outright at our miracu