After leaving your sisters
this house seems so desolate; but I shall have the more
time to think of you. I have been reading Tennyson, as you
told me, and I fancy that I could in truth be a Mariana
here, if it were not that I am so quite certain that you
will come;--and that makes all the difference in the world
in a moated grange. Last night I sat at the window and
tried to realise what I should feel if you were to tell me
that you did not want me; and I got myself into such an
ecstatic state of mock melancholy that I cried for half an
hour. But when one has such a real living joy at the back
of one's romantic melancholy, tears are very pleasant;--
they water and do not burn.
I must tell you about them all at Killaloe. They certainly
are very unhappy at the idea of your resigning. Your
father says very little, but I made him own that to act
as you are acting for the sake of principle is very grand.
I would not leave him till he had said so, and he did say
it. Dear Mrs. Finn does not understand it as well, but
she will do so. She complains mostly for my sake, and
when I tell her that I will wait twenty years if it is
necessary, she tells me I do not know what waiting means.
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