I began to write to you, my beloved friend, earlier, that I might follow your kindest wishes literally, and also to thank you at once for your goodness to me, for which may God bless you.  But the fatigue and agitation have been very great, and I was forced to break off—­as now I dare not revert to what is behind.  I will tell you more another day.  At Orleans, with your kindest letter, I had one from my dearest, gracious friend Mr. Kenyon, who, in his goodness, does more than exculpate—­even approves—­he wrote a joint letter to both of us.  But oh, the anguish I have gone through!  You are good, you are kind.  I thank you from the bottom of my heart for saying to me that you would have gone to the church with me. Yes, I know you would.  And for that very reason I forbore involving you in such a responsibility and drawing you into such a net.  I took Wilson with me.  I had courage to keep the secret to my sisters for their sakes, though I will tell you in strict confidence that it was known to them potentially, that is, the attachment and engagement were known, the necessity remaining that, for stringent reasons affecting their own tranquillity, they should be able to say at last, ’We were not instructed in this and this.’  The dearest, fondest, most affectionate of sisters they are to me, and if the sacrifice of a life, or of all prospect of happiness, would have worked any lasting good to them, it should have been made even in the hour I left them.  I knew that by the anguish I suffered in it.  But a sacrifice, without good to anyone—­I shrank from it.  And also, it was the sacrifice of two.  And he, as you say, had done everything for me, had loved me for reasons which had helped to weary me of myself, loved me heart to heart persistently—­in spite of my own will—­drawn me back to life and hope again when I had done with both.  My life seemed to belong to him and to none other at last, and I had no power to speak a word.  Have faith in me, my dearest friend, till you can know him.  The intellect is so little in comparison to all the rest, to the womanly tenderness, the inexhaustible goodness, the high and noble aspiration of every hour.  Temper, spirits, manners:  there is not a flaw anywhere.  I shut my eyes sometimes and fancy it all a dream of my guardian angel.  Only, if it had been a dream, the pain of some parts of it would have awakened me before now; it is not a dream.  I have borne all the emotion of fatigue miraculously well, though, of course, a good deal exhausted at times.  We had intended to hurry on to the South at once, but at Paris we met Mrs. Jameson, who opened her arms to us with the most literal affectionateness, kissed us both, and took us by surprise by calling us ’wise people, wild poets or not.’  Moreover, she fixed us in an apartment above her own in the Hotel de la Ville de Paris, that I might rest for a week, and crowned the rest of her goodnesses by agreeing to accompany us to Pisa, where she was