Page:Blanchard on L. E. L.pdf/49

Rh speech, correspondence, or actions, simply because self-interest demanded it to save her conduct from misrepresentation, was a task which, so far from any one being able to accomplish, few would, without deliberation, venture to attempt; so quick were her feelings, so lofty her woman's pride, and so keen and all-sufficing her consciousness of right.

By no one could this grave and delicate duty have been more properly discharged than by the friend to whom the preceding letter was addressed. Mrs. Thomson had known L. E. L. and her family for years. Dr. Antony Todd Thomson had been her medical attendant from her girlish days—both had been in the most friendly and cordial intimacy with her—so that it might almost be said she had been rarely out of their sight. Mrs. Thomson's high sense of moral rectitude—and not that only, but her clear perception of the nicer proprieties demanded by conventional prejudice—her intellectual qualifications, and the position she occupied—pointed her out as the friend from whom might best come some necessary hints at the existence of the scandal that had been diffused, and such advice as one woman may give to another without addressing to her an arrogant lecture on self-government. Of the just application of the solicitude and affection that were thus shown, the following letter, written in June, 1826, is at once the proof and the recompense.

"I have not written so soon as I intended, my dear Mrs. Thomson; first, because I wished to be able to tell you I had taken some steps towards change; and I also wished, if possible, to subdue the bitterness and indignation of feelings not to be expressed to one so kind as yourself. I must own