her so completely that when she severed the fine, close cords (brittle,
yet so strong) which had bound us together for years, she cut into my
heart--nay more, wrested from me all my sweet trusts and faiths. If she is
false, who else in all God's earth is true? I pity myself very much. You,
of course, will not see why her marrying should make a difference if we
loved, and will call me selfish. Not so, not so! She might have married as
soon as it pleased her, and I should have been glad. It would have made a
difference, of course: she must in some sort have been parted from me, but
that I could have borne if it made her happy. But from her acceptance of
her lover--about whom we will say nothing, save that he was the sort of
man she had always held in abhorrence--she has coolly ignored my right to
any part or lot in her fate. She had told me (or I, poor fool! thought so)
every hope and fear of her life: now she told me what she chose, and was
astonished that I expected more--hurt that I seemed changed and did not
find my friendship flourish on crumbs after being nourished for years from
full loaves--was quite unhappy that I cared so little for the minor
concerns of her life, when, good lack! I did not know what I might or
might not ask and not be snubbed; for once she told me there were things
due to the man one is going to marry (at that time she had not got to the
extent of saying whom one loves) that could not be spoken of to me. Of
course she had only to mention the fact to me to make it perfectly plain,
and henceforth he and his doings, his belongings and himself, all of them
of the tamest sort at best, were a sealed book to me. And again she
quenched a feeble effort of mine to get back to my old place, by telling
me such topics she could discuss only with her sister, "her shadow sister"
she prettily called her. So I am desolate!

Knowing this, you may understand in some degree what could induce a little
waif like me to accept such an offer as yours. I think no one in all God's
earth is more desolate than I. In my heart I bear always that unforgotten