out my "making a
trophy of her," and marching her a prisoner across the borders before
all the world!

I do like her: she is worth winning.--Can one say warmer of a future
mother-in-law who stands hostile?

All the same it was an ordeal. I believe I have wept since: for Benjy
scratched my door often yesterday evening, and looked most wistful when
I came out. Merely paltry self-love, dearest:--I am so little accustomed
to not being--liked.

I think she will be more gracious in her own house. I have her formal
word that I am to come. Soon, not too soon, I will come over; and you
shall meet me and take me to see her. There is something in her
opposition that I can't fathom: I wondered twice was lunacy her notion:
she looked at me so hard.

My mother's seclusion and living apart from us was not on _that_
account. I often saw her: she was very dear and sweet to me, and had
quiet eyes the very reverse of a person mentally deranged. My father, I
know, went to visit her when she lay dying; and I remember we all wore
mourning. My uncle has told me they had a deep regard for each other:
but disagreed, and were independent enough to choose living apart.

I do not remember my father ever speaking of her to us as children: but
I am sure there was no state of health to be concealed.

Last night I was talking to Aunt N---- about her. "A very dear woman,"
she told me, "but your father was never so much alive to her worth as
the rest of us." Of him she said, "A dear, fine fellow: but not at all
easy to get on with." Him, of course, I have a continuous recollection
of, and "a fine fellow" we did think him. My mother comes to me more
rarely, at intervals.

Don't talk me down your mother's throat: but tell her as much as she cares
to know of this. I am very proud of my "stock" which she thinks "poor"!

Dear, how much I have written on things which can never concern us
finally, and so should not ruffle us while they last! Hold me in your
heart always, always; and the world may turn adamant to me for aught I
care! Be in my dreams to-night!

LETTER XVI.

But, Dearest: When I think of you I never question whether what I think
would be true or false in the eyes of others. All that concerns you seems
to go on a different plane where evidence has no meaning or existence:
where nobody exists or means anything, but only we two alone, engaged in
bringing about for ourselves the still greater solitude of two into one.
Oh, Beloved