will write the letter, but I will not write it now. You shall see
it before it goes."

CHAPTER V.

SHOWING WHAT RACHEL RAY THOUGHT WHEN SHE SAT ON THE STILE,
AND HOW SHE WROTE HER LETTER AFTERWARDS.

Rachel, as soon as she had made her mother the promise that she would
write the letter, left the parlour and went up to her own room. She
had many thoughts to adjust in her mind which could not be adjusted
satisfactorily otherwise than in solitude, and it was clearly
necessary that they should be adjusted before she could write her
letter. It must be remembered, not only that she had never before
written a letter to a lover, but that she had never before written
a letter of importance to any one. She had threatened at one moment
that she would leave the writing of it to her mother; but there came
upon her a feeling, of which she was hardly conscious, that she
herself might probably compose the letter in a strain of higher
dignity than her mother would be likely to adopt. That her lover
would be gone from her for ever she felt almost assured; but still it
would be much to her that, on going, he should so leave her that his
respect might remain, though his love would be a thing of the past.
In her estimation he was a noble being, to have been loved by whom
even for a few days was more honour than she had ever hoped to win.
For a few days she had been allowed to think that her great fortune
intended him to be her husband. But Fate had interposed, and now
she feared that all her joy was at an end. But her joy should be so
relinquished that she herself should not be disgraced in the giving
of it up. She sat there alone for an hour, and was stronger, when
that hour was over, than she had been when she left her mother. Her
pride had supported her, and had been sufficient for her support in
that first hour of her sorrow. It is ever so with us in our misery.
In the first flush of our wretchedness, let the outward signs of our
grief be what they may, we promise to ourselves the support of some
inner strength which shall suffice to us at any rate as against the
eyes of the outer world. But anon, and that inner staff fails us; our
pride yields to our tears; our dignity is crushed beneath the load
with which we have burdened it, and then with loud wailings we own
ourselves to be the wretches which we are. But now Rachel was in the
hour of her pride, and as she came down from her room she resolved
that her sorrow should be bu