the letters that I wrote. You found in them taunts and sneers which
you considered intolerable. Tell me, my lord, if you had been in my
position, would you have been more generous? Think how galling it is
to a proud and sensitive nature to, discover that it is tied up and
bound beyond the possibility of release. Now this is far worse for a
woman than it is for a man. A woman, unless she is an Asiatic and a
slave, does not wish to be given up unasked. I found myself the
property of one who was not only indifferent to me, but, as I plainly
saw, averse to me. It was but natural that I should meet scorn with
scorn. In your letters I could read between the lines, and in your
cold and constrained answers to your father's remarks about me I saw
how strong was your aversion. In your letters to me this was still
more evident. What then? I was proud and impetuous, and what you
merely hinted at I expressed openly and unmistakably. You found fault
with this. You may be right, but my conduct was after all natural.

"It is this, Lord Chetwynde, which will account for my last letter to
you. Crushed by the loss of my only friend, I reflected upon the
difference between you and him, and the thought brought a bitterness
which is indescribable. Therefore I wrote as I did. My sorrow,
instead of softening, imbittered me, and I poured forth all my
bitterness in that letter. It stung you. You were maddened by it and
outraged. You saw in it only the symptoms and the proofs of what you
chose to call a 'bad mind and heart.' If you reflect a little you
will see that your conclusions were not so strictly just as they
might have been. You yourself, you will see, were not the immaculate
being which you suppose yourself to be.

"I say to you now, Lord Chetwynde, that all this time, instead of
hating you, I felt very differently toward you. I had for you a
feeling of regard which, at least, may be called sisterly.
Associating with your father as I did, possessing his love, and
enjoying his confidence, it would have been strange if I had not
sympathized with him somewhat in his affections. Your name was always
on his lips. You were the one of whom he was always speaking. When I
wished to make him happy, and such a wish was always in my heart, I
found no way so sure and certain as when I spoke in praise of you.
During those years when I was writing those letters which you think
showed a 'bad mind and heart,' I was incessantly engaged in sounding
you