failed me, my life is a blank.  I have heard of empty-hearted people:  I know now what the phrase means.  I am empty-hearted:  I have not one hope, one particle of faith, one real, honest desire, except to “drie my weir,” as the Scotch say, doing my duty as best I may, as it comes to me.  But I have a woman’s hatred of pity:  my cousins have long accorded me a contemptuous pity for being an old maid.  I laughed their pity to scorn while I had Esther Hooper.  What more did I need?  We could enact over again the sweet old life of the Ladies of Llangollen.

We had planned our lives a thousand times.  Poor we both were, yet we would put something away every year for our old age, and work cheerily on until we could work no more, then creep to our nest like a couple of old kittens, and cuddle down by our warm, pleasant fire—­together, and therefore content.  Well, you see it was not to be:  she had grown affrighted, I suppose, at the thought of all that weary life with only me, and has married a man who outrages all her delicate instincts and traditions of an accordant husband.  But why speak of him?  He supports her, and she has escaped the obloquy of old-maidism.  She has married a maintenance.  She says she loves him, so of course she does.

For myself, my health, which has always been very rugged, has failed me utterly this last year; but as my bread depends upon my ability to endure daily and constant fatigue, I have forced myself to endeavor to get up the amount of strength required for my winter’s work by the present expedition, planned for me by a friend.  Bah! what do I talk of friendship for?  An old lady who was once a teacher in the school from which my father had married my mother, and who, I think, had cared with more than friendship for him, has in these last few years fallen heir to a small property—­not a very great deal, but enough to enable her to live in comfort, and exercise her kindly heart in deeds of charity occasionally.  She has chosen for years to occupy rooms beneath my own, and has always been a sort of mother to me.  Most of the pretty things that have fallen into my life, and most of its pleasures, have come to me through her.  She has many troublesome faults, as we all have, but she is old, and I have always had Esther to talk them over and laugh them off with, so have borne them easily.  This year, because she saw I was dying, she took me with her to the mountains of Vermont, and I have got a new lease of life, and new capacities for suffering as well.

On our way back she was suddenly attacked with the illness which detained us at this Boston hotel.  Here your accident laid you up, and the rest came as I have told.

You have married me to rid yourself of a union with a woman you detest, being utterly indifferent to me.  I have married you because I cannot bring myself to go back to that old teaching-life, now so cold and gray.  I think I can earn my board in taking care of your belongings, and the having saved you from a dreadful fate must compensate to you for the little of my presence you will for the future be compelled to endure.  It need not be much or long continued if we start with a fair comprehension of each other.