Greville swore he would no longer be prevented seeing her, and Mary made no opposition to his entrance.
Calmly and passively she heard all he had to say; what he told her then she did not repeat in writing to Herbert.

She merely said that she had implored him to wait till her health was a little more restored; not to force her to become the wife of Dupont, till she could stand _without support_ beside the altar, and he had consented.
"Be comforted, then, my beloved Herbert," she wrote, as she concluded this brief tale of suffering.

"They buoy me up with hopes that in a very few months I shall be as well as ever I was.

I smile, for I know the blight has fallen, and I shall never stand beside an earthly altar; all I pray is, that death may not linger till my father's patience be exhausted, and he vent on my poor mother all the reproaches which my lingering illness will, I know, call forth.

Oh, my beloved Herbert, there are moments when I think the bitterness of death is passed, when I am so calm, so happy, I feel as if I had already reached the confines of my blissful, my eternal home; but this is not always granted me.