So he walked home slowly through the lanes, very meditative, with his hands behind his back.
Nor when he got home was he much more inclined to any resolute line of action. He might have drank his tea with Lady Scatcherd, as well as have sat there in his own drawing-room drinking it alone; for he got no pen and paper, and he dawdled over his teacup with the utmost dilatoriness, putting off, as it were, the evil day. To only one thing was he fixed—to this, namely, that that letter should be written before he went to bed.
Having finished his tea, which did not take place till near eleven, he went down stairs to an untidy little room which lay behind his depot of medicines, and in which he was wont to do his writing, and herein he did at last set himself down to his work. Even at that moment he was in doubt. But he would write his letter to Miss Dunstable, and see how it looked. He was almost determined not to send it; so, at least, he said to himself; but he could do no harm by writing it. So he did write it, as follows:
"Greshamsbury, June, 185-.
"My dear Miss Dunstable—"
When he had got so far, he leaned back in his chair and looked at the paper. How on earth was he to find words to say that which he now wished to have said? He had never written such a letter in his life, or any thing approaching to it, and now found himself overwhelmed with a difficulty of which he had not previously thought. He spent another half hour in looking at the paper, and was at last nearly deterred by this new difficulty. He would use the simplest, plainest language, he said to himself over and over again; but it is not always easy to use simple, plain language—by no means so easy as to mount on stilts, and to march along with sesquipedalian words, with pathos, spasms, and notes of interjection. But the letter did at last get itself written, and there was not a note of interjection in it.
"My dear Miss Dunstable,—I think it right to confess that I should not be now writing this letter to you had I not been led to believe by other judgment than my own that the proposition which I am going to make would be regarded by you with favor. Without such other judgment I should, I own, have feared that the great disparity between you and me in regard to money would have given to such a proposition
