The subject is certainly not too serious, so sensibly treated. I have no
doubt that you may do a great deal of good by pursuing it in "Household
Words." I thoroughly agree in all you say in your note, have similar
reasons for giving it some anxious consideration, and shall be greatly
interested in it. Pray decide to do it. Send the papers, as you write
them, to me. Meanwhile I will think of a name for them, and bring it to
bear upon yours, if I think yours improvable. I am sure you may rely on
being widely understood and sympathised with.
Forget that I called those two women my dear friends! Why, if I told you
a fiftieth part of what I have thought about them, you would write me
the most suspicious of notes, refusing to receive the fiftieth part of
that. So I don't write, particularly as you laid your injunctions on me
concerning Ruth. In revenge, I will now mention one word that I wish you
would take out whenever you reprint that book. She would never--I am
ready to make affidavit before any authority in the land--have called
her seducer "Sir," when they were living at that hotel in Wales. A girl
pretending to be what she really was would have done it, but she--never!
Ever most faithfully yours.
[Sidenote: Monsieur Regnier.]