So the first proposal is the proposal accepted.  They are to go to Italy, and I am to arrange, with Sir Percival’s permission, for meeting them and staying with them when they return to England.  In other words, I am to ask a personal favour, for the first time in my life, and to ask it of the man of all others to whom I least desire to owe a serious obligation of any kind.  Well!  I think I could do even more than that, for Laura’s sake.

2nd.—­On looking back, I find myself always referring to Sir Percival in disparaging terms.  In the turn affairs have now taken.  I must and will root out my prejudice against him, I cannot think how it first got into my mind.  It certainly never existed in former times.

Is it Laura’s reluctance to become his wife that has set me against him?  Have Hartright’s perfectly intelligible prejudices infected me without my suspecting their influence?  Does that letter of Anne Catherick’s still leave a lurking distrust in my mind, in spite of Sir Percival’s explanation, and of the proof in my possession of the truth of it?  I cannot account for the state of my own feelings; the one thing I am certain of is, that it is my duty—­doubly my duty now—­not to wrong Sir Percival by unjustly distrusting him.  If it has got to be a habit with me always to write of him in the same unfavourable manner, I must and will break myself of this unworthy tendency, even though the effort should force me to close the pages of my journal till the marriage is over!  I am seriously dissatisfied with myself—­I will write no more to-day.

December 16th.—­A whole fortnight has passed, and I have not once opened these pages.  I have been long enough away from my journal to come back to it with a healthier and better mind, I hope, so far as Sir Percival is concerned.

There is not much to record of the past two weeks.  The dresses are almost all finished, and the new travelling trunks have been sent here from London.  Poor dear Laura hardly leaves me for a moment all day, and last night, when neither of us could sleep, she came and crept into my bed to talk to me there.  “I shall lose you so soon, Marian,” she said; “I must make the most of you while I can.”

They are to be married at Limmeridge Church, and thank Heaven, not one of the neighbours is to be invited to the ceremony.  The only visitor will be our old friend, Mr. Arnold, who is to come from Polesdean to give Laura away, her uncle being far too delicate to trust himself outside the door in such inclement weather as we now have.  If I were not determined, from this day forth, to see nothing but the bright side of our prospects, the melancholy absence of any male relative of Laura’s, at the most important moment of her life, would make me very gloomy and very distrustful of the future.  But I have done with gloom and distrust—­that is to say, I have done with writing about either the one or the other in this journal.