Friday morning.—­For the rest, I will think as you desire:  but I have thought a great deal, and there are certainties which I know; and I hope we both are aware that nothing can be more hopeless than our position in some relations and aspects, though you do not guess perhaps that the very approach to the subject is shut up by dangers, and that from the moment of a suspicion entering one mind, we should be able to meet never again in this room, nor to have intercourse by letter through the ordinary channel.  I mean, that letters of yours, addressed to me here, would infallibly be stopped and destroyed—­if not opened.  Therefore it is advisable to hurry on nothing—­on these grounds it is advisable.  What should I do if I did not see you nor hear from you, without being able to feel that it was for your happiness?  What should I do for a month even?  And then, I might be thrown out of the window or its equivalent—­I look back shuddering to the dreadful scenes in which poor Henrietta was involved who never offended as I have offended ... years ago which seem as present as to-day.  She had forbidden the subject to be referred to until that consent was obtained—­and at a word she gave up all—­at a word.  In fact she had no true attachment, as I observed to Arabel at the time—­a child never submitted more meekly to a revoked holiday.  Yet how she was made to suffer.  Oh, the dreadful scenes! and only because she had seemed to feel a little.  I told you, I think, that there was an obliquity—­an eccentricity, or something beyond—­on one class of subjects.  I hear how her knees were made to ring upon the floor, now! she was carried out of the room in strong hysterics, and I, who rose up to follow her, though I was quite well at that time and suffered only by sympathy, fell flat down upon my face in a fainting-fit.  Arabel thought I was dead.

I have tried to forget it all—­but now I must remember—­and throughout our intercourse I have remembered.  It is necessary to remember so much as to avoid such evils as are inevitable, and for this reason I would conceal nothing from you.  Do you remember, besides, that there can be no faltering on my ‘part,’ and that, if I should remain well, which is not proved yet, I will do for you what you please and as you please to have it done.  But there is time for considering!

Only ... as you speak of ‘counsel,’ I will take courage to tell you that my sisters know, Arabel is in most of my confidences, and being often in the room with me, taxed me with the truth long ago—­she saw that I was affected from some cause—­and I told her.  We are as safe with both of them as possible ... and they thoroughly understand that if there should be any change it would not be your fault....  I made them understand that thoroughly.  From themselves I have received nothing but the most smiling words of kindness and satisfaction (I thought I might tell you so much), they have too much tenderness