defend myself. What is it of which
you complain, or have a right to complain? We became
engaged more than twelve months since, certainly with no
understanding that the matter was to stand over for three
years. My understanding was that we were to be married as
soon as it might reasonably be arranged. You then took on
yourself to order this delay, and kindly offered to give
me up as an alternative. I could not force you to marry
me; but I loved you too well, and trusted too much in
your love to be able to think that that giving up was
necessary. Perhaps I was wrong.

But the period of this wretched interval is at my own
disposal. Had you married me, my time would have been
yours. It would have been just that you should know how
it was spent. Each would then have known so much of the
other. But you have chosen that this should not be; and,
therefore, I deny your right now to make inquiry. If I
have departed from any hopes you had formed, you have no
one to blame but yourself.

You have said that I neglect you. I am ready to marry you
to-morrow; I have been ready to do so any day since our
engagement. You yourself know how much more than ready
I have been. I do not profess to be a very painstaking
lover; nay, if you will, the life would bore me, even if
in our case the mawkishness of the delay did not do more
than bore. At any rate, I will not go through it. I loved,
and do love you truly. I told you of it truly when I first
knew it myself, and urged my suit till I had a definite
answer. You accepted me, and now there needs be nothing
further till we are married.

But I insist on this, that I will not have my affairs
discussed by you with persons to whom you are a stranger.

You will see my letter to your aunt. I have told her that
I will visit her at Littlebath as soon as I have returned
to England.

Yours ever affectionately,

G. B.

This letter was a terrible blow to Caroline. It seemed to her to
be almost incredible that she, she, Caroline Waddington, should be
forced to receive such a letter as that under any circumstances and
from any gentleman. Unseemly, unfeminine, unladylike! These were the
epithets her lover used in addressing her. She was told that it bored
him to play the lover; that his misconduct was her fault; and then
she was accused of mawkishness! He was imperative, too, in laying hi