He experienced a certain dissatisfaction with Isa’s letter.  She had always since his imprisonment taken pains to write cordially.  He had been “Dear Mr. Charlton,” or “My Dear Mr. Charlton,” and sometimes even “My Dear Friend.”  Isa was anxious that he should not feel any coldness in her letters.  Now that he was about to be released and would naturally feel grateful to her, the case was very different.  But Albert could not see why she should be so friendly with him when she had every reason to believe him guilty, and now that she knew him innocent should freeze him with a stranger-like coolness.  He had resolved to care nothing for her, and yet here he was anxious for some sign that she cared for him.

Albert wrote in reply: 

“HOUSE OF BONDAGE, May 20th, 1857.

“MY DEAR, GOOD FRIEND:  The death of my mother has given me a great deal of sorrow, though it did not surprise me.  I remember now how many times of late years I have given her needless trouble.  For whatever mistakes her personal peculiarities led her into, she was certainly a most affectionate mother.  I can now see, and the reflection causes me much bitterness, that I might have been more thoughtful of her happiness without compromising my opinions.  How much trouble my self-conceit must have given her!  Your rebuke on this subject has been very fresh in mind since I heard of her death.  And I am feeling lonely, too.  Mother and Katy have gone, and more distant relatives will not care to know an outlaw.

“If I had not seen Mr. Lurton, I should not have known how much I owe to your faithful friendship.  I doubt not God will reward you.  For I, too, am coming to believe in a Providence!

“Sometimes I think this prison has done me good.  There may be some truth, after all, in that acrid saying of Mrs. Ferret’s about ’sanctified affliction,’ though she does know how to make even truth hateful.  I haven’t learned to believe as you and Mr. Lurton would have me, and yet I have learned not to believe so much in my own infallibility.  I have been a high-church skeptic—­I thought as much of my own infallibility as poor O’Neill in the next cell does of the Pope’s.  And I suppose I shall always have a good deal of aggressiveness and uneasiness and all that about me—­I am the same restless man yet, full of projects and of opinions.  I can not be Lurton—­I almost wish I could.  But I have learned some things.  I am yet very unsettled in my opinions about Christ—­sometimes he seems to be a human manifestation of God, and at other times, when my skeptical habit comes back, he seems only the divinest of men.  But I believe in him with all my heart, and may be I shall settle down on some definite opinion after a while.  I had a mind to ask Lurton to baptize me the other day, but I feared he wouldn’t do it.  All the faith I could profess would be that I believe enough in Christ to wish to be his disciple.  I know Mr. Lurton wouldn’t think that enough.  But I don’t believe Jesus himself would refuse me.  His immediate followers couldn’t have believed much more than that at first.  And I don’t think you would refuse me baptism if you were a minister.