There is a stone which is of all the hardest and the chillest, but when once set on fire it is unquenchable.

You smile at my image, perhaps, and I should smile if I saw it in the writing of another; for all that I have ridiculed in romance as exaggerated seems now to me too cool and too commonplace for reality.
But this is not what I meant to write to you; you are ill, dearest and noblest Isabel, you are ill! I am the cause, and you conceal it from me; and you would rather pine away and die than suffer me to lose one of those worldly advantages which are in my eyes but as dust in the balance,--it is in vain to deny it.

I heard from others of your impaired health; I have witnessed it myself.

Do you remember last night, when you were in the room with your relations, and they made you sing,--a song too which you used to sing to me, and when you came to the second stanza your voice failed you, and you burst into tears, and they, instead of soothing, reproached and chid you, and you answered not, but wept on?
Isabel, do you remember that a sound was heard at the window and a groan?
Even they were startled, but they thought it was the wind, for the night was dark and stormy, and they saw not that it was I: yes, my devoted, my generous love, it was I who gazed upon you, and from whose heart that voice of anguish was wrung; and I saw your cheek was pale and thin, and that the canker at the core had preyed upon the blossom.
Think you, after this, that I could keep silence or obey your request?
No, dearest, no! Is not my happiness your object?
I have the vanity to believe so; and am I not the best judge how that happiness is to be secured?
I tell you, I say it calmly, coldly, dispassionately,--not from the imagination, not even from the heart, but solely from the reason,--that I can bear everything rather than the loss of you; and that if the evil of my love scathe and destroy you, I shall consider and curse myself as your murderer! Save me from this extreme of misery, my--yes, my Isabel! I shall be at the copse where we have so often met before, to-morrow, at noon.

You will meet me; and if I cannot convince you, I will not ask you to be persuaded.