"Mary,
what will you do if some day you get a letter from me confessing
that I am not happy? I dare not say a word to my own people. I am
supposed to be at the apex of human triumph, and I have to play that
role to keep from hurting them. I know that if my dear old father
got an inkling of the truth, it would kill him. My one real solid
consolation is that I have helped him, that I have lifted a
money-burden from his life; I have done that, I tell myself, over
and over; but then I wonder, have I done anything but put the
reckoning off? I have given all his other children a new excuse for
extravagance, an impulse towards worldliness which they did not
need.
"There is my sister Celeste, for example. I don't think I have told
you about her. She made her _d?but_ last fall, and was coming up to
New York to stay with me this winter. She had it all arranged in her
mind to make a rich marriage; I was to give her the _entr?e_--and
now I have been selfish, and thought of my own desires, and gone
away. Can I say to her, Be warned by me, I have made a great match,
and it has not brought me happiness? She would not understand, she
would say I was foolish. She would say, 'If I had your luck, _I_
would be happy.
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