Page:The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (emended first edition), Volume 3.djvu/154

144 "But we may write," I timidly suggested—"You will not deny me that consolation?"

"We can hear of each other through my brother."

"Your brother!" A pang of remorse and shame shot through me. She had not heard of the injury he had sustained at my hands; and I had not the courage to tell her. "Your brother will not help us," I said: "he would have all communion between us to be entirely at an end."

"And he would be right, I suppose. As a friend of both, he would wish us both well; and every friend would tell us it was our interest, as well as our duty, to forget each other, though we might not see it ourselves. But don't be afraid, Gilbert," she added, smiling sadly at my manifest discomposure, "there is little chance of my forgetting you. But I did not mean that Frederick should be the means of transmitting messages between us, only that each might know, through him, of the other's