As your Grace's wife, I should be easy no longer;
--nor would your Grace.
You will think perhaps that what I write is heartless,
that I speak altogether of your rank, and not at all of
the affection you have shown me, or of that which I might
possibly bear towards you. I think that when the first
flush of passion is over in early youth men and women
should strive to regulate their love, as they do their
other desires, by their reason. I could love your Grace,
fondly, as your wife, if I thought it well for your Grace
or for myself that we should be man and wife. As I think
it would be ill for both of us, I will restrain that
feeling, and remember your Grace ever with the purest
feeling of true friendship.
Before I close this letter, I must utter a word of
gratitude. In the kind of life which I have led as a
widow, a life which has been very isolated as regards
true fellowship, it has been my greatest effort to obtain
the good opinion of those among whom I have attempted to
make my way. I may, perhaps, own to you now that I have
had many difficulties. A woman who is alone in the world
is ever regarded with suspicion. In this country a woman
with a foreign name, with means derived from foreign
sources, with a foreign history, is specially suspected.
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