early August 1885

Dear friend,

What a reception for you! Did she wait for your approbation?

Her deferring to die until you came seemed to me so confiding - as if nothing should be presumed. It can probably never be real to you.

The Vail that helps us, falls so mercifully over it.

"An envious Silver broke" was a passage your Uncle peculiarly loved in the drowning Ophelia.

Was it a premonition? To him to whom Events and Omens are at last the same?

I shall certainly think of you in the second departure, so innocent, so cruel.

Isaac pleads again, "but where is the Lamb for the Sacrifice?" The Clock's sweet voice makes no reply.

No faithful pang is silenced, but Anguish sometimes gives a cause which was at first concealed. That you two be not sundered is my holy wish.

Emily, with love.