, wrong or right, I did and do consider that in not doing so I
sinned against no duty. That I was _constrained_ to act clandestinely,
and did not _choose_ to do so, God is witness, and will set it down as
my heavy misfortune and not my fault. Also, up to the very last act we
stood in the light of day for the whole world, if it pleased, to judge
us. I never saw him out of the Wimpole Street house; he came twice a
week to see me--or rather, three times in the fortnight, openly in
the sight of all, and this for nearly two years, and neither more
nor less. Some jests used to be passed upon us by my brothers, and I
allowed them without a word, but it would have been infamous in me to
have taken any into my confidence who would have suffered, as a direct
consequence, a blighting of his own prospects. My secrecy towards them
all was my simple duty towards them all, and what they call want of
affection was an affectionate consideration for them. My sisters did
indeed know the truth to a certain point. They knew of the attachment
and engagement--I could not help that--but the whole of the event I
kept from them with a strength and resolution which really I did not
know to be in me, and of which nothing but a sense of the injury to
be done to them by a fuller confidence, and my tender gratitude
and attachment to them for all their love and goodness, could have
rendered me capable. Their faith in me, and undeviating affection for
me, I shall be grateful for to the end of my existence, and to
the extent of my power of feeling gratitude. My dearest
sisters!--especially, let me say, my own beloved Arabel, who, with
no consolation except the exercise of a most generous tenderness, has
looked only to what she considered my good--never doubting me, never
swerving for one instant in her love for me. May God reward her as I
cannot. Dearest Henrietta loves me too, but loses less in me, and has
reasons for not misjudging me. But both my sisters have been faultless
in their bearing towards me, and never did I love them so tenderly as
I love them now.

The only time I met R.B. clandestinely was in the parish church, where
we were married before two witnesses--it was the first and only time.
I looked, he says, more dead than alive, and can well believe it, for
I all but fainted on the way, and had to stop for sal volatile at a
chemist's shop. The support through it all was _my trust in him_,
for no woman who ever committed a like act of trust