February 19th, 1894

Thank you. I appreciate it – and I understand that it serves no one to be associated with me now, truly or falsely. If word has spread of it at all, I do not know how, because of course I have not brought it up to anyone since. But please know that I will not mention your name again – and I am still unconscious of what possibly possessed me to have asked it of you in the first place.

I am extremely sorry to have involved you.* I truly did not expect to be in the situation I am in now. You must think I am entirely

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* Again. If the rumour mill strung his name together with the whispers of her earlier engagement, she would have as good as dragged Mr. Carmichael’s name into scandal for a second time, through utterly no doing of his own. Perhaps – Jemima thought miserably, at his letter – his seemingly bad luck was because she was just inherently cursed, and he, as a Seer, was innately drawn to omens of oncoming doom.

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February 21st, 1894