is evident that, had she been the wife of any man
engaged in the duties of a profession, she might have been summoned from
the very first, and without the possibility of any such gradual
training, to the necessity of relying almost singly upon her own courage
and discretion. For the other question, whether I did not depend too
blindly and presumptuously upon my good luck in not at least affording
her my protection so long as nothing occurred to make it impossible? I
may reply most truly that all my feelings ran naturally in the very
opposite channel. So far from confiding too much in my luck, in the
present instance I was engaged in the task of writing upon some points
of business which could not admit of further delay; but now, and at all
times, I had a secret aversion to seeing so gentle a creature thrown
even for an hour upon her own resources, though in situations which
scarcely seemed to admit of any occasion for taxing those resources; and
often I have felt anger towards myself for what appeared to be an
irrational or effeminate timidity, and have struggled with my own mind
upon occasions like the present, when I knew that I could not have
acknowledged my tremors to a friend without something like shame, and a
fear to excite his ridicule. No; if in anything I ran into excess, it
was in this very point of anxiety as to all that regarded my wife's
security. Her good sense, her prudence, her courage (for courage she had
in the midst of her timidity), her dignity of manner, the more
impressive from the childlike character of her countenance, all should
have combined to reassure me, and yet they did not. I was still anxious
for her safety to an irrational extent; and to sum up the whole in a
most weighty line of Shakspeare, I lived under the constant presence of
a feeling which only that great observer of human nature (so far as I am
aware) has ever noticed, viz., that merely the excess of my happiness
made me jealous of its ability to last, and in that extent less capable
of enjoying it; that in fact the prelibation of my tears, as a homage to
its fragility, was drawn forth by my very sense that my felicity was too
exquisite; or, in the words of the great master--

'I wept to have' [absolutely, by anticipation, shed tears in
possessing] 'what I so feared to lose.'

Thus end my explanations, and I now pursue my narrative: Agnes, as I have
said, came into my room again before leaving the house--we conversed fo