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1760

    My Dearest Love,
    I hardly know what to write, as there has
been so much Heartbreak for everyone, and there will be more.
    How can I write these things to you, when
you face Death every day? You write so modestly, my love, yet
everyone here knows how brave you have been. I know you are
promoted liutenant-colonel, and leading a battalion, and I never
doubted you would be highly esteemed.
    You must still be brave now, reading this,
brave for both of us. I feel all my Courage has deserted me, if
ever I had any.
    My darling, I know you know by now from my
letters and others that influenzza  took your Father this
Spring and that your Mother nursed him, and was struck with it
herself two months later. There was nothing on earth that could be
done for either of them, or it would have been done.
    Your Mama did not want me with her at the
end, though I stayd in any case. She was so frightened that I
should get sick, but I didn't. John, she dyed smiling when she
thought of you, and she sayd this, that she and your Father had
true love after all, as they went to Another World within little
time of each other. And her only regrett was that she couldn't see
you.
    Your brothers were spaired, though Ned was a
little sick, and became so thin. Our house was spaired too - it was
spaired the dizease, but not scandal.
    My love, I wrote to you that my sister
Virginia, who was meant to marry Mr. St James, married a penny less
schoolteacher eight months after you left. She eloped with him, and
brought Shame on all of us, and Scorn.
    It cut my heart in so many pieces to see my
Father in such a state, for so much depended on this marraige for
the whole family. You know my Papa, and he is never a distemperate
or desperate man, and yet I saw him with his face in his hands, and
wondering what he should do.
    Then this Spring dizease took so many people
around us, and he despaired that he should also suddenly go, and
leave his girls in poverty, as my cousin would take the house and
the Annuity from the lands, and leave us with nothing.
    John, my Dearest Heart, you cannot imagine
the great pain I felt at seeing my Father like this, and my sisters
crying.
    And this is the horrible thing which I must
tell you, that your brother Montrose, who is now the Earl, came to
the house and locked himself up with my father; and when he came
out, my father calld me and told me what had been sayd.
    That your brother wishes to marry me, and
that by doing so all my sisters will be saved, because of his great
fortune and connections.
    Papa sayd that I could not marry him, as I
was betrothed to another man, and Montrose, or rather Halford as he
must be known now, sayd that he knew Papa meant you, and that I was
not betrothed, that he knew there had never been a formal promise
on either side between us.
    He sayd that it was foolish for me to wait
for a man who might not come back from War, and who had no property
or livelyhood, and could not help his daughters. That my sisters
and I should live in penury, as Servants or Beggars.
    He sayd many such things, which made my
father weep when he was gone, and his distress was so great I
thought I should die of pity.
    Papa offered that Halford should pick Bess,
but he disdained her, and sayd that he was lowering himself to
choose one of us at all, but that it should be me or No One. Bess
heard this, as she was listening through the Keyhole, and now hates
me beyond what she hated me before.
    My sweet love, I cannot marry Halford as I
do not love him, or even like him. I think I hate him. I cannot
marry any man but you.
    John, I must hear from you by the very next
post. It will take so long for this letter to reach you, and you
must write back the very same day. What shall I do?
    I shall find excuses to delay my answer, I
shall pretend to be ill and dying. My darling, I think I shall die,
I think I would, if I would not cause such terrible grief to my
father, and leave my sisters so helpless.
    I shall delay this response in the