ely articulate. Several things I should have liked to
ask him were swept entirely from my memory. Poor fellow! But he
wanted such hope and such encouragement as I could not give him.
Still, I trust he must know now that I am not cruelly blind and
indifferent to his constancy and grief. For a few weeks he goes to
the south of England, afterwards he takes a curacy somewhere in
Yorkshire, but I don't know where.

'Papa has been far from strong lately. I dare not mention Mr.
Nicholls's name to him. He speaks of him quietly and without
opprobrium to others, but to me he is implacable on the matter.
However, he is gone--gone, and there's an end of it. I see no chance
of hearing a word about him in future, unless some stray shred of
intelligence comes through Mr. Sowden or some other second-hand
source. In all this it is not I who am to be pitied at all, and of
course nobody pities me. They all think in Haworth that I have
disdainfully refused him. If pity would do Mr. Nicholls any good, he
ought to have, and I believe has it. They may abuse me if they will;
whether they do or not I can't tell.

'Write soon and say how your prospects proceed. I trust they will
daily brighten.--Yours faithfully,

'C. BRONTE.'

TO MISS LAETITIA WHEELWRIGHT

'HAWORTH, _March_ 18_th_, 1854.

'MY DEAR LAETITIA,--I was very glad to see your handwriting again; it
is, I believe, a year since I heard from you. Again and again you
have recurred to my thoughts lately, and I was beginning to have some
sad presages as to the cause of your silence. Your letter happily
does away with all these; it brings, on the whole, good tidings both
of your papa, mamma, your sister, and, last but not least, your dear
respected English self.

'My dear father has borne the severe winter very well, a circumstance
for which I feel the more thankful, as he had many weeks of very
precarious health last summer, following an attack from which he
suffered last June, and which for a few hours deprived him totally of
sight, though neither his mind, speech, nor even his powers of motion
were in the least affected. I can hardly tell you how thankful I
was, dear Laetitia, when, after that dreary and almost