But if you knew what an effort has enabled me to tame down my language, to curb my thoughts, to prevent me from embodying that which now makes my brain whirl, and my hand feel as if the living fire consumed it; if you knew what has enabled me to triumph over the madness at my heart, and spare you what, if writ or spoken, would seem like the ravings of insanity, you would not and you could not despise me, though you might abhor.
And now Heaven guard and bless you! Nothing on earth could injure you.

And even the wicked who have looked upon you learn to pray,--I have prayed for you! Thus, abrupt and signatureless, ended the expected letter.

Lucy came down the next morning at her usual hour, and, except that she was very pale, nothing in her appearance seemed to announce past grief or emotion.

The squire asked her if she had received the promised letter.
She answered, in a clear though faint voice, that she had,--that Mr.
Clifford had confessed himself of too low an origin to hope for marriage with Mr.Brandon's family; that she trusted the squire would keep his secret; and that the subject might never again be alluded to by either.

If in this speech there was something alien to Lucy's ingenuous character, and painful to her mind, she felt it as it were a duty to her former lover not to betray the whole of that confession so bitterly wrung from him.