in which a woman's personal interests are most
closely bound up. She has left it all to the
dressmaker and to me. If poor Hartright had
been the baronet, and the husband of her father's
choice, how differently she would have behaved!
How anxious and capricious she would have
been; and what a hard task the best of
dressmakers would have found it to please her!

30th. We hear every day from Sir Percival.
The last news is, that the alterations in his
house will occupy from four to six months,
before they can be properly completed. If painters,
paper-hangers, and upholsterers could make
happiness as well as splendour, I should be
interested about their proceedings in Laura's
future home. As it is, the only part of Sir
Percival's last letter which does not leave me as it
found me, perfectly indifferent to all his plans
and projects, is the part which refers to the
wedding tour. He proposes, as Laura is
delicate, and as the winter threatens to be unusually
severe, to take her to Rome, and to remain in
Italy until the early part of next summer. If
this plan should not be approved, he is equally
ready, although he has no establishment of his
own in town, to spend the season in London, in
the most suitable furnished house that can be
obtained for the purpose.

Putting myself and my own feelings entirely out
of the question (which it is my duty to do, and
which I have done), I, for one, have no doubt of
the propriety of adopting the first of these
proposals. In either case, a separation between
Laura and me is inevitable. It will be a longer
separation, in the event of their going abroad,
than it would be in the event of their remaining
in London—but we must set against this
disadvantage, the benefit to Laura on the other side,
of passing the winter in a mild climate; and,
more than that, the immense assistance in raising
her spirits, and reconciling her to her new
existence, which the mere wonder and excitement
of travelling for the first time in her life
in the most interesting country in the world,
must surely afford. She is not of a disposition
to find resources in the conventional gaieties
and excitements of London. They would only
make the first oppression of this lamentable
marriage fall the heavier on her. I dread the
beginning of her new life more than words can
tell; but I see some hope for her if she travels
—none if she remains at home.

It is strange to look back at this latest entry
in my journal, and to find that I am writing of the
marriage and the parting with Laura, as people
write of a settled thing. It seems so cold and so
unfeeling to be looking at the future already in
this cruelly composed way. But what other
way is possible, now that the time is drawing
so near? Before another month is over our
heads, she will be his Laura instead of mine!
His Laura! I am as little able to realise the
idea which those two words convey—my mind feels
almost as dulled and stunned by it, as if writing
of her marriage were like writing of her death.

December 1st. A sad, sad day; a day that I
have no heart to describe at any length. After
weakly putting it off, last night, I was obliged
to speak to her this morning of Sir Percival's
proposal about the wedding tour.

In the full conviction, that I should be
with her, wherever she went, the poor child—
a child she is still in many things—was
almost happy at the prospect of seeing the
wonders of Florence and Rome and Naples.
It nearly broke my heart to dispel her delusion,
and to bring her face to face with
the hard truth. I was obliged to tell her
that no man tolerates a rival—not even a
woman-rival—in his wife's affections, when he
first marries, whatever he may do afterwards. I
was obliged to warn her, that my chance of living
with her permanently under her own roof,
depended entirely on my not arousing Sir
Percival's jealousy and distrust by standing between
them at the beginning of their marriage, in the
position of the chosen depositary of his wife's
closest secrets. Drop by drop, I poured the
profaning bitterness of this world's wisdom into
that pure heart and that innocent mind, while
every higher and better feeling within me
recoiled from my miserable task. It is over now.
She has learnt her hard, her inevitable lesson.
The simple illusions of her girlhood are gone;
and my hand has stripped them off. Better
mine than his—that is all my consolation—
better mine than his.

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. l
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.