It is a still, sultry, moonless night. The stars are dull and few. The trees that shut out the view on all sides look dimly black and solid in the distance, like a great wall of rock. I hear the croaking of frogs, faint and far off, and the echoes of the great clock hum in the airless calm long after the strokes have ceased. I wonder how Blackwater Park will look in the daytime? I don’t altogether like it by night.

Blackwater Park, Hampshire.

June 11th, 1850 .⁠—Six months to look back on⁠—six long, lonely months since Laura and I last saw each other!

How many days have I still to wait? Only one! Tomorrow, the twelfth, the travellers return to England. I can hardly realise my own happiness⁠—I can hardly believe that the next four-and-twenty hours will complete the last day of separation between Laura and me.