The Disowned — Volume 03 eBook

Ah!  Eleanor, or “heigho!” as the young ladies in novels write, do you remember how jealous I was of you at ——­, and how spiteful I was, and how you were an angel, and bore with me, and kissed me, and told me that—­that I had nothing to fear?  Well, Clar—­I mean Mr. Linden, is now in town and so popular, and so admired!  I wish we were at ——­ again, for there we saw him every day, and now we don’t meet more than three times a week; and though I like hearing him praised above all things, yet I feel very uncomfortable when that praise comes from very, very pretty women.  I wish we were at ——­ again!  Mamma, who is looking more beautiful than ever, is, very kind! she says nothing to be sure, but she must see how—­that is to say—­she must know that—­ that I—­I mean that Clarence is very attentive to me, and that I blush and look exceedingly silly whenever he is; and therefore I suppose that whenever Clarence thinks fit to ask me, I shall not be under the necessity of getting up at six o’clock, and travelling to Gretna Green, through that odious North Road, up the Highgate Hill, and over Finchley Common.

“But when will he ask you?” My dearest Eleanor, that is more than I can say.  To tell you the truth, there is something about Linden which I cannot thoroughly understand.  They say he is nephew and heir to the Mr. Talbot whom you may have heard Papa talk of; but if so, why the hints, the insinuations, of not being what he seems, which Clarence perpetually throws out, and which only excite my interest without gratifying my curiosity?  ‘It is not,’ he has said, more than once, ‘as an obscure adventurer that I will claim your love;’ and if I venture, which is very seldom (for I am a little afraid of him), to question his meaning, he either sinks into utter silence, for which, if I had loved according to book, and not so naturally, I should be very angry with him, or twists his words into another signification, such as that he would not claim me till he had become something higher and nobler than he is now.  Alas, my dear Eleanor, it takes a long time to make an ambassador out of an attache.

See now if you reproached me justly with scanty correspondences.  If I write a line more, I must begin a new sheet, and that will be beyond the power of a frank,—­a thing which would, I know, break the heart of your dear, good, generous, but a little too prudent aunt, and irrevocably ruin me in her esteem.  So God bless you, dearest Eleanor, and believe me most affectionately yours, Flora Ardenne.

LETTER II.

From the same to the same.