An Englishwomans Love-Letters

An Englishwoman's Love-Letters,
by Anonymous

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Title: An Englishwoman's Love-Letters
Author: Anonymous
Release Date: May 30, 2005 [EBook #15941]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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AN ENGLISHWOMAN'S LOVE-LETTERS

NEW YORK THE MERSHON COMPANY PUBLISHERS

AN ENGLISHWOMAN'S LOVE-LETTERS.
EXPLANATION.
It need hardly be said that the woman by whom these letter were
written had no thought that they would be read by anyone but the
person to whom they were addressed. But a request, conveyed under
circumstances which the writer herself would have regarded as
all-commanding, urges that they should now be given to the world; and,
so far as is possible with a due regard to the claims of privacy, what is
here printed presents the letters as they were first written in their
complete form and sequence.
Very little has been omitted which in any way bears upon the devotion
of which they are a record. A few names of persons and localities have
been changed; and several short notes (not above twenty in all),
together with some passages bearing too intimately upon events which
might be recognized, have been left out without indication of their
omission.
It was a necessary condition to the present publication that the
authorship of these letters should remain unstated. Those who know
will keep silence; those who do not, will not find here any data likely to
guide them to the truth.
The story which darkens these pages cannot be more fully indicated
while the feelings of some who are still living have to be consulted; nor
will the reader find the root of the tragedy explained in the letters
themselves. But one thing at least may be said as regards the principal
actors--that to the memory of neither of them does any blame belong.
They were equally the victims of circumstances, which came whole out
of the hands of fate and remained, so far as one of the two was
concerned, a mystery to the day of her death.

LETTER I.
Beloved: This is your first letter from me: yet it is not the first I have
written to you. There are letters to you lying at love's dead-letter office
in this same writing--so many, my memory has lost count of them!
This is my confession: I told you I had one to make, and you
laughed:--you did not know how serious it was--for to be in love with
you long before you were in love with me--nothing can be more serious
than that!
You deny that I was: yet I know when you first really loved me. All at
once, one day something about me came upon you as a surprise: and
how, except on the road to love, can there be surprises? And in the
surprise came love. You did not know me before. Before then, it was
only the other nine entanglements which take hold of the male heart
and occupy it till the tenth is ready to make one knot of them all.
In the letter written that day, I said, "You love me." I could never have
said it before; though I had written twelve letters to my love for you, I
had not once been able to write of your love for me. Was not that
serious?
Now I have confessed! I thought to discover myself all blushes, but my
face is cool: you have kissed all my blushes away! Can I ever be
ashamed in your eyes now, or grow rosy because of anything you or I
think? So!--you have robbed me of one of my charms: I am brazen.
Can you love me still?
You love me, you love me; you are wonderful! we are both wonderful,
you and I.
Well, it is good for you to know I have waited and wished, long before
the thing came true. But to see you waiting and wishing, when the thing
was true all the time:--oh! that was the trial! How not suddenly to
throw my arms round you and cry, "Look, see! O blind mouth, why are
you famished?"

And you never knew? Dearest, I love you for it, you never knew! I
believe a man, when he finds he has won, thinks he has taken the city
by assault: he does not guess how to the insiders it has been a weary
siege,