with
her, and she with me.'

Poor Jean! Think of her too confiding and trustful love written down
_mercenary fawning_! But this was not Burns. The whole letter is false
and vulgar. Perhaps he thought to please his Clarinda by the comparison;
she had little womanly feeling if she felt flattered. Let us believe,
for her own sake, that she was disgusted. His letter to Ainslie, ten
days later, is something very different, though even yet he gives no
hint of acknowledging Jean as his wife. 'Jean I found banished like a
martyr--forlorn, destitute, and friendless--all for the good old cause.
I have reconciled her to her fate; I have reconciled her to her mother;
I have taken her a room; I have taken her to my arms; I have given her a
guinea, and I have embraced her till she rejoiced with joy unspeakable
and full of glory.'

This is flippant in tone, but something more manly in sentiment; Burns
was coming to his senses. On 13th June, twin girls were born to Jean,
but they only lived a few days. On the same day their father wrote from
Ellisland to Mrs. Dunlop a letter, in which we see the real Burns, true
to the best feelings of his nature, and true to his sorely-tried and
long-suffering wife. 'This is the second day, my honoured friend, that I
have been on my farm. A solitary inmate of an old smoky spence, far from
every object I love, or by whom I am beloved; nor any acquaintance older
than yesterday, except Jenny Geddes, the old mare I ride on; while
uncouth cares and novel plans hourly insult my awkward ignorance and
bashful inexperience.... Your surmise, madam, is just; I am, indeed, a
husband.... You are right that a bachelor state would have ensured me
more friends; but, from a cause you will easily guess, conscious peace
in the enjoyment of my own mind, and unmistrusting confidence in
approaching my God, would seldom have been of the number. I found a once
much-loved and still much-loved female, literally and truly cast out to
the mercy of the naked elements; but I enabled her to _purchase_ a
shelter,--there is no sporting with a fellow-creature's happiness or
misery.'

It was not till August that the marriage was ratified by the Church,
when Robert Burns and Jean Armour were rebuked for their acknowledged
irregularity, and admonished 'to adhere faithfully to one another, as
man and wife, all the days of their life.'

This was the only fit and proper ending of Burns's acquaintance with
Jean Armour. As an honourable