But there is danger
in my keeping the letter. The merest accident might place it at
the mercy of strangers. I may fall ill--I may die. Better to
burn it at once, and have one anxiety the less.
It is burnt. The ashes of his farewell letter--the last he may
ever write to me--lie in a few black fragments on the hearth. Is
this the sad end to all that sad story? Oh, not the end--surely,
surely not the end already!
29th.--The preparations for the marriage have begun. The
dressmaker has come to receive her orders. Laura is perfectly
impassive, perfectly careless about the question of all others in
which a woman's personal interests are most closely bound up. She
has left it all to the dressmaker and to me. If poor Hartright
had been the baronet, and the husband of her father's choice, how
differently she would have behaved! How anxious and capricious she
would have been, and what a hard task the best of dressmakers
would have found it to please her!
30th.--We hear every day from Sir Percival. The last news is that
the alterations in his house will occupy from four to six months
before they can be properly completed. If painters, paperhangers,
and upholsterers could make happiness as well as splendour, I
should be interested about their proceedings in Laura's future
home.
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