eared to give her something of her
lost animation. It was a look that I had never seen, and it soon went:
but in the evening she asked me whether I prayed before sleeping, and
when she retired to her bedroom, I remained there with her for a time.

"You will pardon me for refusing to let her know that you have written
to your relative in the Austrian service to obtain a commission for you.
But, on the other hand, I have thought it right to tell her incidentally
that you will be married in the Summer of this year. I can only say that
she listened quite calmly.

"I beg that you will not blame yourself so vehemently. By what you
do, her friends may learn to know that you regret the strange effect
produced by certain careless words, or conduct: but I cannot find that
self-accusation is ever good at all. In answer to your question, I may
add that she has repeated nothing of what she said when we were together
in Devon.

"Our chief desire (for, as we love her, we may be directed by our
instinct), in the attempt to restore her, is to make her understand that
she is anything but worthless. She has recently followed my brother's
lead, and spoken of herself, but with a touch of scorn. This morning,
while the clear frosty sky continues, we were to have started for an old
castle lying toward Wales; and I think the idea of a castle must have
struck her imagination, and forced some internal contrast on her mind.
I am repeating my brother's suggestion--she seemed more than usually
impressed with an idea that she was of no value to anybody. She asked
why she should go anywhere, and dropped into a chair, begging to
be allowed to stay in a darkened room. My brother has some strange
intuition of her state of mind. She has lost any power she may have had
of grasping abstract ideas. In what I conceived to be play, he told
her that many would buy her even now. She appeared to be speculating on
this, and then wished to know how much those persons would consider her
to be worth, and who they were. Nor did it raise a smile on her face to
hear my brother mention Jews, and name an absolute sum of money; but,
on the contrary, after evidently thinking over it, she rose up, and
said that she was ready to go. I write fully to you, telling you these
things, that you may see she is at any rate eager not to despair, and is
learning, much as a child might learn it, that it need not be.

"Believe me, that I will in every way help to dispossess your mind