her, how
not to displease you, disappoint you, vex you--what if all those
things were in my fate?

And--(to begin!)--_I_ am disappointed to-night. I expected a letter
which does not come--and I had felt so sure of having a letter
to-night ... unreasonably sure perhaps, which means doubly sure.

_Friday._--Remember you have had two notes of mine, and that it is
certainly not my turn to write, though I am writing.

Scarcely you had gone on Wednesday when Mr. Kenyon came. It seemed
best to me, you know, that you should go--I had the presentiment of
his footsteps--and so near they were, that if you had looked up the
street in leaving the door, you must have seen him! Of course I told
him of your having been here and also at his house; whereupon he
enquired eagerly if you meant to dine with him, seeming disappointed
by my negative. 'Now I had told him,' he said ... and murmured on to
himself loud enough for me to hear, that 'it would have been a
peculiar pleasure &c.' The reason I have not seen him lately is the
eternal 'business,' just as you thought, and he means to come 'oftener
now,' so nothing is wrong as I half thought.

As your letter does not come it is a good opportunity for asking what
sort of ill humour, or (to be more correct) bad temper, you most
particularly admire--sulkiness?--the divine gift of sitting aloof in a
cloud like any god for three weeks together perhaps--pettishness? ...
which will get you up a storm about a crooked pin or a straight one
either? obstinacy?--which is an agreeable form of temper I can assure
you, and describes itself--or the good open passion which lies on the
floor and kicks, like one of my cousins?--Certainly I prefer the last,
and should, I think, prefer it (as an evil), even if it were not the
born weakness of my own nature--though I humbly confess (to _you_, who
seem to think differently of these things) that never since I was a
child have I upset all the chairs and tables and thrown the books
about the room in a fury--I am afraid I do not even 'kick,' like my
cousin, now. Those demonstrations were all done by the 'light of other
days'--not a very full light, I used to be accustomed to think:--but
_you_,--_you_ think otherwise, _you_ take a fury to be the opposite of
'indifference,' as if there could be no such thing as self-control!
Now for my part, I do believe that the worst-tempered persons in the
world are less so through sensibility than selfishness--they spare
nobody