there is any question here of sentiments exceeding friendship. We
are neither of us children; he is three or four years older than I,
I should imagine,--twenty-nine or thirty, or thereabouts.

For aught I know, he may already have loved and lost as I have; and
were it even possible that I should ever love again, I hardly think
that Gabriel would be the man. Anyway, we are excellent friends, and
I believe that my companionship has become as precious to him as his
is to me. We meet now every two or three days, and walk together,
either before breakfast or after early dinner.

Did your ears burn on Wednesday? I told him a great deal about you.
We had been having one of our customary argumentative conversations,
principally about marriage, more especially still about the horrors
of false marriages, and this led me to tell him that the best friend
I have on earth is infamously bound for the whole of her dear life
by a marriage contracted before she was seventeen years old. He
thinks, dearest, with me, that you ought to face the horrors of the
divorce court rather than linger on in chains, and certainly listen
no longer to the considerations, pecuniary and otherwise, which
influence your mother.

I fancy, from the way in which he spoke, that his father and mother
were not happy together; he has therefore not had in his life the
blessing that was mine,--the daily contemplation of an absolutely
perfect union. Indeed, he hardly seems to believe in the possibility
of ideal marriages, and declares that he himself will certainly
never marry unless some law is passed whereby men and women shall be
able to bind themselves for a limited number of years, at the
expiration of which they may either renew the bond or go free. I