e again my uncle is right. I have caused trouble enough
and anxiety enough, and I will cause no more."

She used to be pliability itself, but she was now inflexibly passive in
her resignation--I might almost say in her despair. Dearly as I love
her, I should have been less pained if she had been violently
agitated--it was so shockingly unlike her natural character to see her
as cold and insensible as I saw her now.

12th.--Sir Percival put some questions to me at breakfast about Laura,
which left me no choice but to tell him what she had said.

While we were talking she herself came down and joined us. She was
just as unnaturally composed in Sir Percival's presence as she had been
in mine. When breakfast was over he had an opportunity of saying a few
words to her privately, in a recess of one of the windows. They were
not more than two or three minutes together, and on their separating
she left the room with Mrs. Vesey, while Sir Percival came to me. He
said he had entreated her to favour him by maintaining her privilege of
fixing the time for the marriage at her own will and pleasure. In
reply she had merely expressed her acknowledgments, and had desired him
to mention what his wishes were to Miss Halcombe.

I have no patience to write more. In this instance, as in every other,
Sir Percival has carried his point with the utmost possible credit to
himself, in spite of everything that I can say or do. His wishes are
now, what they were, of course, when he first came here; and Laura
having resigned herself to the one inevitable sacrifice of the
marriage, remains as coldly hopeless and enduring as ever. In parting
with the little occupations and relics that reminded her of Hartright,
she seems to have parted with all her tenderness and all her
impressibility. It is only three o'clock in the afternoon while I
write these lines, and Sir Percival has left us already, in the happy
hurry of a bridegroom, to prepare for the bride's reception at his
house in Hampshire. Unless some extraordinary event happens to prevent
it they will be married exactly at the time when he wished to be
married--before the end of the year. My very fingers burn as I write
it!

13th.--A sleepless night, through uneasiness about Laura. Towards the
morning I came to a resolution to try what change of scene would do to
rouse her. She cannot surely remain in her present torpor of
insensibility, if I take her away from Limmeridge and s