in the papers, Miss Lister asked me if I was the same as ever; and when I said yes, and forbade her the subject for the future, she only begged that I would see him and allow myself to know him better.  I said I would do so, provided she was quite sure he was ready to blame himself alone for the consequences, which she said he would.  Accordingly, wherever we met I allowed him to speak to me.  I begged Lizzy always to join in our talk, if she could, as it made me much happier, but this she has not done nearly as much as I wished.  Whenever I knew we were to meet him, I also took care to tell Lizzy that it would be no pleasure to me, and that if it was at dinner, I hoped I should not sit next to him.  I said these things to her oftener than I should naturally have done, because I saw that in her wish to disbelieve them she really did so, and I wished to make her understand me, in case either Papa or Mama or the boys should be speaking of it before her.  You will say, why did I not speak more to Mama herself?—­partly because I was afraid of bringing forward the subject, partly because I knew what I had to say would make her sorry, and partly because I was not at times so very sure as to have courage to say it must all come to an end.  However, after a dinner at Lady Holland’s last week, when he was all the evening by me, I felt I must speak—­that it would be very wrong to allow it to go on in the same way, and that we had no right to expect the world to see how all advances to intimacy, since we came to town, have been made by him in the face of a refusal.  I do not despise the gossip of the world where there is so much foundation for it, and I have felt it very disagreeable to know that busy eyes were upon us several times.  It must therefore stop, but do not imagine that I have been acting without thought.  I am perfectly easy about him—­I mean that he will blame nobody but himself, as I have taken care never to understand anything that he has said that he might mean to be particular, and the few times that he ventured to approach the subject he spoke in so perfectly hopeless and melancholy a way as to satisfy me.  I am also easy about Miss Lister, as only a week ago she said how sorry she was to see that I was happier in society without than with him; but both he and they must see that it cannot go on so.  What a stone I am—­but it is needless to speak of that.  Only when I think of all his goodness and excellence, above all his goodness in fixing upon me among so many better fitted to him, I first wonder and wonder whether he really can be in earnest, then reproach myself bitterly for my hardness—­and then the children:  to think of rejecting an opportunity of being so useful—­or at least of trying to be so!  All these thoughts, turned over and over in my mind oftener than I myself knew before we left Minto, did make me think that perhaps I had decided rashly.  Now do not repeat this, dear Mary; I have said more to you than to anybody yet—­but I am sorry it is time to stop, I have so much more to say.  I cannot say how grateful I am to Papa and Mama for leaving me so free in all this, and to you for writing.

    Ever your most affectionate sister, FANNY