I gave the letter to my mother. We read it, and marveled over it
together. Thus, counseled by the ever-present spirit of her
husband, Dame Dermody wrote:


"MADAM--I have taken what you may be inclined to think a great
liberty. I have assisted your son George in se tting his uncle's
authority at defiance. I have encouraged your son George in his
resolution to be true, in time and in eternity, to my grandchild,
Mary Dermody.

"It is due to you and to me that I should tell you with what
motive I have acted in doing these things.

"I hold the belief that all love that is true is foreordained and
consecrated in heaven. Spirits destined to be united in the
better world are divinely commissioned to discover each other and
to begin their union in this world. The only happy marriages are
those in which the two destined spirits have succeeded in meeting
one another in this sphere of life.

"When the kindred spirits have once met, no human power can
really part them. Sooner or later, they must, by divine law, find
each other again and become united spirits once more. Worldly
wisdom may force them into widely different ways of life; worldly
wisdom may delude them, or may make them delude themselves, into
contracting an earthly and a fallible union. It matters nothing.
The time will certainly come when that union will manifest itself
as earthly and fallible; and the two disunited spirits, finding
each other again, will become united here for the world beyond