“Hate you! I was angry perhaps at first, but my anger soon began to take a proper direction.”
“I knew,”said he,“that what I wrote must give you pain, but it was necessary. I hope you have destroyed the letter.There was one part especially,the opening of it,which I should dread your having the power of reading again. I can remember some expressions which might justly make you hate me.”
“The letter,perhaps,began in bitterness,but it did not end so. The adieu is charity itself.But think no more of the letter.The feelings of the person who wrote,and the person who received it, are now so widely different from what they were then,that every unpleasant circumstance attending it ought to be forgotten.You must learn some of my philosophy.Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.”
“I can easily believe it.You thought me then devoid of every proper feeling,I am sure you did.The turn of your countenance I shall never forget,as you said that I could not have addressed you in any possible way that would induce you to accept me.”
“I cannot give you credit for any philosophy of the kind.Your retrospections must be so totally void of reproach, that the contentment arising from them is not of philosophy, but, what is much better, of innocence. But with me, it is not so. Painful recollections will intrude which cannot,which ought not,to be repelled.I have been a selfish being all my life,in practice,though not in principle.As a child I was taught what was right,but I was not taught to correct my temper.I was given good principles,but left to follow them in pride and conceit. Unfortunately an only son (for many years an only child), I was spoilt by my parents, who,though good themselves(my father,particularly,all that was benevolent and amiable),allowed,encouraged,almost taught me to be selfish and overbearing; to care for none beyond my own family circle;to think meanly of all the rest of the world;to wish at least to think meanly of their sense and worth compared with my own. Such I was, from eight to eight and twenty; and such I might still have been but for you,dearest,loveliest Elizabeth! What do I not owe you!You taught me a lesson,hard indeed at first, but most advantageous. By you, I was properly humbled. I came to you without a doubt of my reception.You showed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased.”