EMILIA.

LETTER III.

FLETCHER'S HALL, GRAYSMILL,
July 26th.

What do you think stepped in with my bath this morning? A long
narrow letter sealed with a heart. I kissed the blue stamp and
spread the three dear sheets out on my pillow. Oime, Constantia, how
I love you! But why write about _me_? Why waste pen and ink
wondering how I am? Tell me about yourself, tell me all you do, and
all you think; tell me how many different hats you wore on
Wednesday, and how you misspent your time on Thursday; tell me of
all the nonsense that is poured into your ears, of all the rubbish
you read; tell me even how many times your mother wakes you in the
night to ask if you are sleeping well. I long for you so that the
very faults of your life are dear to me, even those for which I most
reprove you when you are near.

Let me see: it is past midday with you; you and your mother are out
walking. I hear you both.

"Constance," says Mrs. Rayner, "put up your parasol!"

"Thanks, mother," you reply; "I like to feel the sun."

"You'll freckle."

"Through this thick veil and all the powder?"

"You'll freckle, I tell you. Put up your parasol."

"Oh, mother, do let me be!"

Here Mrs. Rayner wrenches the parasol out of your hands and puts it
up with a jerk; you take it, heaving a very loud sigh, upon which
your mother seizes it again and pops it down.

"Very well, be as freckled as you please; what does it matter to me,
after all? It's so pretty to have freckles, isn't it? Please
yourself! Only I warn you that you'll look like a fig before the
year's out!"

Oh, dear me, it seems I'm in good spirits to-day! Why not, with your
letter in my pocket? I am sitting out of doors in the woods. I love
this place, apart from its own beauty; I like to think of my father
out here in the open, dreaming his young dreams. Indoors in the old
house I am often miserable, with a misery beyond my own, remembering
how he suffered once between those walls.

No, I am not really in good spirits, although there comes now and
again a little gust of light-heartedness. You know me. For the rest,
I hate myself, I am a worm. The empire of myself is lost; I am
sitting low on the ground, where my troubles laid me, letting what
may run over me. I hate myself both for my abject hopelessness and
for my incapacity to take comfort at the h