Somehow, I've never been able to get his
friendship; he's always had a latent distrust of me--or something like
distrust--and perhaps that's made me sometimes a little awkward and
diffident with him. I think it may be he felt from the first that I
cared a great deal about you, and he naturally resented it. I think
perhaps he felt this even during all the time when I was so careful--
at least I thought I was--not to show, even to you, how immensely I
did care. And he may have feared that you were thinking too much
about me--even when you weren't and only liked me as an old friend.
It's perfectly comprehensible to me, also, that at his age one gets
excited about gossip. Dear Isabel, what I'm trying to get at, in my
confused way, is that you and I don't care about this nonsensical
gossip, ourselves, at all. Yesterday I thought the time had come when
I could ask you to marry me, and you were dear enough to tell me
"sometime it might come to that." Well, you and I, left to ourselves,
and knowing what we have been and what we are, we'd pay as much
attention to "talk" as we would to any other kind of old cats' mewing!
We'd not be very apt to let such things keep us from the plenty of
life we have left to us for making up to ourselves for old
unhappinesses and mistakes.
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