Yet I myself was carried away and intoxicated by so sudden and so soft a hope,--even I dared to lift my eyes to you, to press you to this guilty heart, to forget myself, and to dream that you might be mine! Can you forgive me for this madness?
And hereafter, when in your lofty and glittering sphere of wedded happiness, can you remember my presumption and check your scorn?
Perhaps you think that by so late a confession I have already deceived you.

Alas! you know not what it costs me now to confess! I had only one hope in life,--it was that you might still, long after you had ceased to see me, fancy me not utterly beneath the herd with whom you live.

This burning yet selfish vanity I tear from me, and now I go where no hope can pursue me.

No hope for myself, save one which can scarcely deserve the name, for it is rather a rude and visionary wish than an expectation,--it is that under another name and under different auspices you may hear of me at some distant time; and when I apprise you that under that name you may recognize one who loves you better than all created things, you may feel then, at least, no cause for shame at your lover.

What will you be then?
A happy wife, a mother, the centre of a thousand joys, beloved, admired, blest when the eye sees you and the ear hears! And this is what I ought to hope, this is the consolation that ought to cheer me; perhaps a little time hence it will.