an no longer parry, evade, or deny it to myself though to the rest
of the world it can never be owned. I love Caroline's betrothed, and he
loves me. It is no yesterday's passion, cultivated by our converse; it
came at first sight, independently of my will; and my talk with him
yesterday made rather against it than for it, but, alas, did not quench
it. God forgive us both for this terrible treachery.

May 25.--All is vague; our courses shapeless. He comes and goes, being
occupied, ostensibly at least, with sketching in his tent in the wood.
Whether he and she see each other privately I cannot tell, but I rather
think they do not; that she sadly awaits him, and he does not appear. Not
a sign from him that my repulse has done him any good, or that he will
endeavour to keep faith with her. O, if I only had the compulsion of a
god, and the self-sacrifice of a martyr!

May 31.--It has all ended--or rather this act of the sad drama has
ended--in nothing. He has left us. No day for the fulfilment of the
engagement with Caroline is named, my father not being the man to press
any one on such a matter, or, indeed, to interfere in any way. We two
girls are, in fact, quite defenceless in a case of this kind; lovers may
come when they choose, and desert when they choose; poor father is too
urbane to utter a word of remonstrance or inquiry. Moreover, as the
approved of my dead mother, M. de la Feste has a sort of autocratic power
with my father, who holds it unkind to her memory to have an opinion
about him. I, feeling it my duty, asked M. de la Feste at the last
moment about the engagement, in a voice I could not keep firm.

'Since the death of your mother all has been indefinite--all!' he said
gloomily. That was the whole. Possibly, Wherryborne Rectory may see him
no more.

June 7 .--M. de la Feste has written--one letter to her, one to me. Hers
could not have been very warm, for she did not brighten on reading it.
Mine was an ordinary note of friendship, filling an ordinary sheet of
paper, which I handed over to Caroline when I had finished looking it
through. But there was a scrap of paper in the bottom of the envelope,
which I dared not show any one. This scrap is his real letter: I scanned
it alone in my room, trembling, hot and cold by turns. He tells me he is
very wretched; that he deplores what has happened, but was helpless. Why
did I let him see me, if only to make him faithless. Alas, alas!

June 21