Do you ever try to read your own face? I do, and I can tell you it is not a
bad study, and gives you more trouble than you can well fancy if you have never
tried it.
He say that I afford him a curious psychological study, and I humbly think I
do. I do not, as you know, take sufficient interest in dress to be able to
describe the new fashions. Dress is a bore. That is slang again, but never
mind. Arthur says that every day.
There, it is all out, Mina, we have told all our secrets to each other since
we were children. We have slept together and eaten together, and laughed and
cried together, and now, though I have spoken, I would like to speak more. Oh,
Mina, couldn't you guess? I love him. I am blushing as I write, for although I
think he loves me, he has not told me so in words. But, oh, Mina, I love him. I
love him! There, that does me good.
I wish I were with you, dear, sitting by the fire undressing, as we used to
sit, and I would try to tell you what I feel. I do not know how I am writing
this even to you. I am afraid to stop, or I should tear up the letter, and I
don't want to stop, for I do so want to tell you all. Let me hear from you at
once, and tell me all that you think about it. Mina, pray for my happiness.
Lucy
P. S.--I need not tell you this is a secret. Goodnight again. L.
LETTER, LUCY WESTENRA TO MINA MURRAY
24 May
My dearest Mina,
Thanks, and thanks, and thanks again for your sweet letter. It was so nice
to be able to tell you and to have your sympathy. My dear, it never rains but
it pours. How true the old proverbs are. Here am I, who shall be twenty in
September, and yet I never had a proposal till today, not a real proposal, and
today I had three. Just fancy! Three proposals in one day! Isn't it awful! I
feel sorry, really and truly sorry, for two of the poor fellows. Oh, Mina, I am
so happy that I don't know what to do with myself. And three proposals! But,
for goodness' sake, don't tell any of the girls, or they would be getting all
sorts of extravagant ideas, and imagining themselves injured and slighted if in
their very first day at home they did not get six at least. Some girls are so
vain! You and I, Mina dear, who are engaged and are going to settle down soon
soberly into old married women, can despise vanity. Well, I must tell you about
the three, but you must keep it a secret, dear, from every one except, of
course, Jonathan. You will tell him, because I would, if I were in your place,
certainly tell Arthur. A woman ought to tell her husband everything. Don't you
think so, dear? And I must be fair. Men like women, certainly their wives, to
be quite as fair as they are. And women, I am afraid, are not always quite as
fair as they should be.
Well, my dear, number One came just before lunch. I told you
of him, Dr. John Seward, the lunatic asylum man, with the strong jaw and the
good forehead. He was very cool outwardly, but was nervous all the same. He had
evidently been schooling himself as to all sorts of little things, and
remembered them, but he almost managed to sit down on his silk hat, which men
don't generally do when they are cool, and then when he wanted to appear at
ease he kept playing with a lancet in a way that made me nearly scream. He
spoke to me, Mina, very straightfordwardly. He told me how dear I was to him,
though he had known me so little, and what his life would be with me to help
and cheer him. He was going to tell me how unhappy he would be if I did not
care for him, but when he saw me cry he said he was a brute and would not add
to my present trouble. Then he broke off and asked if I could love him in time,
and when I shook my head his hands trembled, and then with some hesitation he
asked me if I cared already for any one else. He put it very nicely, saying
that he did not want to wring my confidence from me, but only to know, because
if a woman's heart was free a man might have hope. And then, Mina, I felt a
sort of duty to tell him that there was some one. I only told him