You can be sure I would not take the pains to do this, nor
the pains to write you in detail, if you had not entered my mind in a
serious way. Frankly the only misgivings I have of you, and I beg you to
forgive me for saying this, is the fact that your father would do such a
thing. I cannot understand it, my mother can't. What was he that he
could do such a thing with the prospect that he would injure you, his
son by another marriage, in so many ways and so deeply? He could not
have overlooked these things; nor the feeling that exists in America,
particularly in the South, against such an alliance. But putting these
things out of mind, you cannot possibly assure me, or any other woman,
against the future. There are the property interests; but if these were
out of the way there is the relationship. And I blame myself deeply, for
I knew that Zoe was your sister almost as soon as I first came to
Jacksonville. With this knowledge I should not have come to your parties
or put myself in a way to be liked by you. I should have only been
polite to you when you came to Reverdy's house. For any other
association, I ask you to forgive me. I have written you many letters,
and then torn them up. Perhaps I shall send this one. It is as good as
I can do. It says everything now except that I am profoundly unhappy,
that I shall never see you again--and to wish you happiness under the
circumstances fills my throat with a kind of suffocation.
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