It is not altogether a bad world, for all that. I certainly have not
found it so; but then it has been my good fortune to draw near the
hearts and brains of some very dear mortals. I cannot tell you how
fond I have grown of this creature,--Gabriel Norton, I mean. I can
say this openly to you, because you are sensible and know me, and
will not think at once, because he is a man and I a woman, that
there is any question here of sentiments exceeding friendship. We
are neither of us children; he is three or four years older than I,
I should imagine,--twenty-nine or thirty, or thereabouts.
For aught I know, he may already have loved and lost as I have; and
were it even possible that I should ever love again, I hardly think
that Gabriel would be the man. Anyway, we are excellent friends, and
I believe that my companionship has become as precious to him as his
is to me. We meet now every two or three days, and walk together,
either before breakfast or after early dinner.
Did your ears burn on Wednesday? I told him a great deal about you.
We had been having one of our customary argumentative conversations,
principally about marriage, more especially still about the horrors
of false marriages, and this led me to tell him that the best friend
I have on earth is infamously bound for the whole of her dear life
by a marriage contracted before she was seventeen years old.
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