"I'd like awfully to see you once more before I go, and if you come to London I hope you will let me call upon you. Don't think I am breaking my heart because you belong to Grey. I am not that kind, and it would do no good. But I loved you as I can never love any one again, and there is always a thought of you in my mind, and I see your face as it looked at me that day in Liverpool, when I acted the part of a cowardly knave.
"I would kick myself for that if I could. You were too good for me, Bessie, and I should have been a drag upon your life always. But Heaven knows how much I miss you, and how at times, when the thought comes over me that you are lost to me forever, and that another man is enjoying the sweetness I once thought would be mine, I half wish I were dead and out of the way of everything. Then I put that feeling aside as unworthy of me, and say to myself that I am glad you are happy, and that Grey is the noblest and best fellow in the world, and the one of all others who ought to have you for his wife. I shall never marry; that is settled. First, there is no woman in the world I can ever look at after loving you; and, second, I am too poor, and always shall be.
"And now I suppose you are thinking of Blanche, and wondering where she is. She and mother had a jolly row, of which I fancy I was the cause. Blanche told mother that all either she or I cared for was to get her ten thousand a year, and by Jove, I believe she was right, but I did not suppose she had sense enough to know it; trust a fool sometimes to see through a stone wall.
"Well, mother told Blanche that I did not even care for the ten thousand pounds, that I loved you, and had been engaged to you, and that you had discarded me. That was the straw too many, and forthwith, Miss Blanche departed from Trevellian House, bag and baggage, and I hear she is about to marry the eldest son of Lord Haxton, a brainless idiot, not half as good-looking as I am. There is conceit for you! But you know I was always rather vain of my looks, and I do believe that the greatest terror poverty holds for me is the knowing that I must wear seedy hats and threadbare coats, and trousers a year behind. Maybe Grey will sometime send me a box of his cast-off clothes.