My Lord Duke,—Finding my peace, that perfect peace which for so many years I have almost uninterruptedly enjoyed interfered with by your visits,—visits which under present circumstances I cannot feel justified in receiving, as they are of so different a nature from those I anticipated when I gave you permission to call upon me,—I think it my duty to entreat they should cease.
My agitation on Sunday week during and after your departure called forth reflections which actuate my present conduct. I do not consider it right personally to place myself so fully and confidentially in the power of one, who, however honorable and noble, occasionally seems to forget he is confided in by a Being who feels herself entitled even in the sight of God, not only to the appellation of virtuous, in the strictest acceptation of the word,—but righteous. This appellation as far exceeds the former in value as the heavens do the earth, as the one is to be found, I trust, frequently in the unregenerate, whilst the latter springs solely from above.
Pray do not imagine by the step now taken that I am incapable of duly appreciating your valued affection!—for I hesitate not to declare there breathes not the Being so dear to me as yourself. Yet, whilst I make this declaration and consequently admit that all the world are as nothing in comparison with you,—I consider it equally my duty to add that however dear God may have made you to me—(and I feel it is His Work, Why or Wherefore time must explain) you are as nothing in comparison with CHRIST, Whose honor I consider concerned, being, I glory to say His openly acknowledged, however unworthy, servant, And for Whose sake consequently I have come to the determination of exercising the self denial herein required.
That you could ever think of Me, notwithstanding your occasional forgetfulness,—with any other than the most honorable of feelings, would of course be as impossible as to imagine you could at pleasure bring the heavens down under your feet or turn the Sun out of his course, since both would be more likely than that I could even for a single moment forget the high end for which I was created, namely, to glorify His Holy Name Who has redeemed me with His precious Blood, and rather than dishonor it I should prefer the sufferings of Eternal torments!
Trusting that the step thus taken may be received by Your Grace in the light duty both to God and myself demand, I will not intrude upon your time further than to assure you that should any spiritual advice from me be considered needful either in sickness or health, it will always be at your service.
With an assurance of remembering you from time to time when I approach His Throne (Who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity) and Who looketh into the deepest recesses of the human heart, I beg to subscribe myself that which in reality I trust you believe I am, namely,
The Duke's answer was a strong contrast to this effusion.
My dear Miss J.,—I have received your letter and enclosures. I beg to remind you of what I said to you the second day that I saw you; and if you recollect it you will not be surprised at my telling you that I entirely concur in the intention which you have communicated to me.
I am obliged to you for what you have sent me; and I am
This note, although courteous in form and substance, brought forth from Miss J. a reply that, beginning mildly, ended in scathing terms.
My Lord Duke,—I have endeavored in vain to recollect what you allude to as having said on the second visit paid me, remembering nothing but what appeared honorable. I supposed it impossible that there breathed a being who could dare presume to make any profession of affection for me under opposite circumstances, feeling as I do, that I should confer as high an honor on a Prince in bestowing my hand on him as he could on me in receiving it—but if it be really possible that I have mistaken Your Grace's feelings I should only degrade my own by adding more than that I deliver you into His Hands that "judgeth righteously" who declares to His children the following words—"Ye are the temples of the Holy Ghost," to which is immediately added "Whosoever therefore defileth the Temple of God, him will I destroy" again,—"Take heed that ye offend not one of these little ones," "Whoso shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck and that he were drowned in the depths of the sea."
Trusting that the Lord will bestow upon you that repentance which is not to be repented of I submit the foregoing scriptures to your prayerful consideration and subscribe myself that which it is the highest honor to be considered, however unworthy of the same I may be and am,
Having on further consideration, I fear found out that to which you have alluded with such cool, insulting, presuming deliberation in your note, as being uttered during your second visit, I have at its remembrance risen in the night with all those indignant feelings insult demands, to assure you that had I understood the motives which actuated you to make such an abhorrent, disgraceful enquiry, one I could not degrade my pen or self by giving place on paper, however Your Grace may and have degraded yourself by utterance of the same, I should at the moment such escaped your lips have spurned you from me as a serpent whose sting was capable of producing not only instantaneous but Eternal death! Such a horror should I have had of one who until now has possessed a share of my affection even surprising to myself—an affection as pure and sincere as it was disinterested, but Alas! under present circumstances with the vail withdrawn from my eyes what a change of feeling exists! such as would incline me if I did not believe that it was the will of God we should have met to mourn deeply at ever having desired it.
In again however reluctantly alluding to the hateful enquiry above noticed—one at the bare utterance of which it is a mercy that God "in whose hands your breath is" knowing your despicable motives (since all hearts are open in His sight and from whom no secrets are hid however ignorant I may have been and was of the same) did not in His wrath strike you dead at my feet. I beg to remind you of my answer which ought, yea, must in itself have convinced you at the time of my misunderstanding your meaning—it being in the following words—"If it be the will of God;" for surely you could never for a moment suppose it to be His will whose purity is such that he charges even His angels with folly that I, his devoted child and servant, should bring such deep dishonor on His holy name as to—but my pen with every feeling of my offended nature recoils from even writing, much less submitting to such abhorrent degradation which none but most polluted lips could ever dare to vent.
The answer was given thus hesitatingly although at the time I was laboring under impressions of its being called forth by the highest and most honorable intentions on your part. And why thus hesitatingly? you would ask. Because I was not and am not quite satisfied that under any circumstances the regenerate soul can be justified in the sight of God in uniting itself to the unregenerate, it being written "Be not unequally yoked with unbelievers," also, "How can two walk together unless they be agreed?"
Thus you will perceive that when laboring under the most favorable impression of your upright intentions, notwithstanding your rank, etc., all of which with me are beheld in the utter nothingness such empty things deserve, I should have hesitated until I perceived