affection which has occasioned my silence, though I fear you will
long ago have attributed it to those causes. If you are well enough,
do write to me just two lines--just to assure me of your
convalescence; not a word, however, if it would harm you--not a
syllable. They value you at home. Sickness and absence call forth
expressions of attachment which might have remained long enough
unspoken if their object had been present and well. I wish your
_friends_ (I include myself in that word) may soon cease to have
cause for so painful an excitement of their regard. As yet I have
but an imperfect idea of the nature of your illness--of its
extent--or of the degree in which it may now have subsided. When you
can let me know all, no particular, however minute, will be
uninteresting to me. How have your spirits been? I trust not much
overclouded, for that is the most melancholy result of illness. You
are not, I understand, going to Bath at present; they seem to have
arranged matters strangely. When I parted from you near White-lee
Bar, I had a more sorrowful feeling than ever I experienced before in
our temporary separations. It is foolish to dwell too much on the
idea of presentiments, but I certainly had a feeling that the time of
our reunion had never been so indefinite or so distant as then. I
doubt not, my dear Ellen, that amidst your many trials, amidst the
sufferings that you have of late felt in yourself, and seen in
several of your relations, you have still been able to look up and
find support in trial, consolation in affliction, and repose in
tumult, where human interference can make no change. I think you
know in the right spirit how to withdraw yourself from the vexation,
the care, the meanness of life, and to derive comfort from purer
sources than this world can afford. You know how to do it silently,
unknown to others, and can avail yourself of that hallowed communion
the Bible gives us with God. I am charged to transmit your mother's
and sister's love. Receive mine in the same parcel, I think it will
scarcely be the smallest share. Farewell, my dear Ellen.

'C. BRONTE.'

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

'_May_ 15_th_, 1840.

'MY DEAR ELLE