Emily had been cheerful as they went. As they returned she was calm and firm. Readily she joined in any conversation. Seldom did she fall into any absent fit of thought, and the effect of that day's drive was any thing but what Mrs. Hazleton expected or wished.
When they returned to the house, a letter was delivered to Emily Hastings, with which, the seal unbroken, she retired to her own room. The hand was unknown to her, but with a sort of prescience something more than natural, she divined at once from whom it came, and saw that the difficult struggle had commenced. An hour or two before, the very thought would have dismayed her. Now the effect was but small.
She had no suspicion of the plans against her; no idea whatever that people might be using her as a tool--that there was any interest contrary to her own, in the conduct or management of others. But yet she turned the key in the door before she commenced the perusal of the letter, which was to the following effect:
"I know not," said the writer, in a happier style than perhaps might have been expected, "how to prevail upon your goodness to pardon all I am going to say, knowing that nothing short of the circumstances in which I am placed, could excuse my approaching you even in thought. I have long known you, though you have known me only for a few short hours. I have watched you often from childhood up to womanhood, and there has been growing upon me from very early years a strong attachment, a deep affection, a powerful--overpowering--ardent love, which nothing can ever extinguish. Need I tell you that the last few days would have increased that love had increase been possible.
"All this, however, I know is no justification of my venturing to raise my thoughts to you--still less of my venturing to express these feelings boldly; but it has been an excuse to myself, and in some degree to others, for abstaining hitherto from that which my best interests, a mother's fame, and my own rights, required. The time has now come when I can no longer remain silent; when I must throw upon you the responsibility of an important choice; when I am forced to tell you how deeply, how devotedly, I love you, in order that you may say whether you will take the only means of saving me from the most painful task I ever undertook, by conferring on me the greatest blessing that woman ever gave to man; or, on the other hand, will drive me to a task repugnant to all my feelings, but just, necessary, inevitable, in case of your refusal. Let me explain, however, that I am your cousin--the son of your father's elder brother by a private marriage with a peasant girl of this county. The whole case is perfectly clear, and I have proof positive of the marriage in my hands. From fear of a lawsuit, and from the pressure of great poverty, my mother was induced to sacrifice her rights after her husband's early death, still to conceal her marriage, to bear even sneers and shame, and to live upon a pittance allowed to her by her husband's father, and secured to her by him after his own death, when she was entitled to honor, and birth, and distinction by the law of the land.