talk of them now.'

With this letter we see the tragedy beginning. Mr. Bronte, with his
daughter's fame ringing in his ears, thought she should do better than
marry a curate with a hundred pounds per annum. For once, and for the
only time in his life there is reason to believe, his passions were
thoroughly aroused. It is to the honour of Mr. Nicholls, and says much
for his magnanimity, that he has always maintained that Mr. Bronte was
perfectly justified in the attitude he adopted. His present feeling for
Mr. Bronte is one of unbounded respect and reverence, and the occasional
unfriendly references to his father-in-law have pained him perhaps even
more than when he has been himself the victim.

'Attachment to Mr. Nicholls you are aware I never entertained.' A good
deal has been made of this and other casual references of Charlotte
Bronte to her slight affection for her future husband. Martha Brown, the
servant, used in her latter days to say that Charlotte would come into
the kitchen and ask her if it was right to marry a man one did not
entirely love--and Martha Brown's esteem for Mr. Nicholls was very great.
But it is possible to make too much of all this. It is a commonplace of
psychology to say that a woman's love is of slow growth. It is quite
certain that Charlotte Bronte suffered much during this period of
alienation and separation; that she alone secured Mr. Nicholls's return
to Haworth, after his temporary estrangement from Mr. Bronte; and
finally, that the months of her married life, prior to her last illness,
were the happiest she was destined to know.

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

'HAWORTH, _December_ 18_th_, 1852.

'DEAR NELL,--You may well ask, how is it? for I am sure I don't know.
This business would seem to me like a dream, did not my reason tell
me it has long been brewing. It puzzles me to comprehend how and
whence comes this turbulence of feeling.

'You ask how papa demeans himself to Mr. Nicholls. I only wish you
were here to see papa in his present mood: you would know something
of him. He just treats him with a hardness not to be bent, and a
contempt not to be propitiated. The two have had no interview as
yet; all has been done by letter. Papa wrote, I must say, a most
cruel note to Mr. Nicholls on Wednesday. In his state of mind and
health (for the poor man is horrifying h