Yes, my Louisa, let me discharge my conscience. Let no accusation of deceit rest with me. I can endure any thing but self-reproach. I avow, therefore, Frank Henley is, in my estimation, the most deserving man I have ever known. A man that I could love infinitely. A man whose virtues I do and must ever love. A man in whose company my heart assures me I could have enjoyed years of happiness. If the casuists in such cases should tell me this is what they mean by love, why then I am in love.
But if the being able, without a murmur, nay cheerfully, to marry another, or see him properly married, if the possession of the power and the resolution to do what is right, and if an unshaken will to exert this power prove the contrary, why then I am not in love.
When I may, without trespassing on any duty, and with the full approbation of my own heart, yield up its entire affections, the man to whom they shall be devoted shall then find how much I can love.
My passions must be, ought to be, and therefore shall be, under my control; and, being conscious of the purity of my own intentions, I have never thought that the emanations of mind ought to be shackled by the dread of their being misinterpreted. It is not only cowardly, but in my opinion pernicious.
Yet, with respect to Frank, I fear this principle has led me into an error. Among other escapes of this kind, there is one which has lately befallen me, and for which I doubt I am reprehensible.
Frank has written a song, in which his feelings and situation are very strongly expressed. He left it on my music desk, by accident; for his character is too open, too determined, to submit to artifice. The words pleased me, I may say affected me, so very much that I was tempted to endeavour to adapt an air to them; which, when it was written, I several times repeated, and accompanied myself on the piano-forte. Your brother came in just as I had ended; and, from a hint which he purposely gave, I suspect that Frank had been listening in the antichamber.
The behaviour of Frank afterward confirmed the supposition. He followed your brother, and sat down while we conversed. His whole soul seemed absorbed; but not, as I have sometimes seen it, in melancholy. Satisfaction, pleasure, I know not whether rapture would be too strong a word for the expressions which were discoverable in his countenance.