There has been no insincerity—­nor is there injustice.  I believe, I am certain, I have loved him better than the rest of his children.  I have heard the fountain within the rock, and my heart has struggled in towards him through the stones of the rock ... thrust off ... dropping off ... turning in again and clinging!  Knowing what is excellent in him well, loving him as my only parent left, and for himself dearly, notwithstanding that hardness and the miserable ‘system’ which made him appear harder still, I have loved him and been proud of him for his high qualities, for his courage and fortitude when he bore up so bravely years ago under the worldly reverses which he yet felt acutely—­more than you and I could feel them—­but the fortitude was admirable.  Then came the trials of love—­then, I was repulsed too often, ... made to suffer in the suffering of those by my side ... depressed by petty daily sadnesses and terrors, from which it is possible however for an elastic affection to rise again as past.  Yet my friends used to say ’You look broken-spirited’—­and it was true.  In the midst, came my illness,—­and when I was ill he grew gentler and let me draw nearer than ever I had done:  and after that great stroke ... you know ... though that fell in the middle of a storm of emotion and sympathy on my part, which drove clearly against him, God seemed to strike our hearts together by the shock; and I was grateful to him for not saying aloud what I said to myself in my agony, ’If it had not been for you’...!  And comparing my self-reproach to what I imagined his self-reproach must certainly be (for if I had loved selfishly, he had not been kind), I felt as if I could love and forgive him for two ... (I knowing that serene generous departed spirit, and seeming left to represent it) ... and I did love him better than all those left to me to love in the world here.  I proved a little my affection for him, by coming to London at the risk of my life rather than diminish the comfort of his home by keeping a part of my family away from him.  And afterwards for long and long he spoke to me kindly and gently, and of me affectionately and with too much praise; and God knows that I had as much joy as I imagined myself capable of again, in the sound of his footstep on the stairs, and of his voice when he prayed in this room; my best hope, as I have told him since, being, to die beneath his eyes.  Love is so much to me naturally—­it is, to all women! and it was so much to me to feel sure at last that he loved me—­to forget all blame—­to pull the weeds up from that last illusion of life:—­and this, till the Pisa-business, which threw me off, far as ever, again—­farther than ever—­when George said ‘he could not flatter me’ and I dared not flatter myself.  But do you believe that I never wrote what I did not feel:  I never did.  And I ask one kindness more ... do not notice what I have written here.  Let it pass.