"I didn't do it so you would not want him."
"Then why?"
And Thomasin, who had had nine months to find an answer, found that she had none that she could say aloud to that face. "Because they were the only thing I ever had," she said finally, "that was mine."
"They had my name on them."
"I know."
"I signed them. I signed every one. I sat there with my tongue between my teeth like a child and drew my own name on letters I could not read, because I trusted you to be my eyes, the way you've been my eyes since I was eleven years old." For the first time Dorothea's voice was not level. She stopped, and pressed her lips together, and when she went on it was level again. "You know what it is to me, not to be able to read. You're the only one who knows. And you used it."
"Yes," said Thomasin. There was no other word. "I did."
Dorothea got up and went to the window and stood there with her back to the room, as she had stood on the morning the first letter came; and after a while she said, without turning round, "He is in love with you."
"He is in love with letters. With paper. He's never spoken ten words to me."
"He's never spoken ten words to me either." A short breath that was not a laugh. "What a pair of fools we are. What a parcel of fools." She turned round. Her face was dry and very pale. "Well. I am going to Carrowby."
"Thea—"
"I made a promise. So did Papa. So did he. A gentleman can't cry off, Tam, you know that; if anyone breaks it, it has to be me, and if I break it now, with the banns called and the day fixed, all Bath will want to know why, and Papa will want to know why, and what shall I tell them? That I can't read my own love letters?" She came back to the table and looked down at the heap of paper on it. "No. I'll marry him. It's what I meant to do when I said yes, and nothing in that drawer was ever mine to change my mind about. But I'll not go to him a fool. You'll read me every one of these again. Tomorrow, and every day till we go. And I'll learn them."