CHAPTER IX.
AT KÖNIGSGRAAF.
Very shortly after this there came a letter from Lady Frances to Paradise Row,—the only letter which Roden received from her during this period of his courtship. A portion of the letter shall be given, from which the reader will see that difficulties had arisen at Königsgraaf as to their correspondence. He had written twice. The first letter had in due course reached the young lady's hands, having been brought up from the village post-office in the usual manner, and delivered to her without remark by her own maid. When the second reached the Castle it fell into the hands of the Marchioness. She had, indeed, taken steps that it should fall into her hands. She was aware that the first letter had come, and had been shocked at the idea of such a correspondence. She had received no direct authority from her husband on the subject, but felt that it was incumbent on herself to take strong steps. It must not be that Lady Frances should receive love-letters from a Post Office clerk! As regarded Lady Frances herself, the Marchioness would have been willing enough that the girl should be given over to a letter-carrier, if she could be thus got rid of altogether,—so that the world should not know that there was or had been a Lady Frances. But the fact was patent,—as was also that too, too-sad truth of the existence of a brother older than her own comely bairns. As the feeling of hatred grew upon her, she continually declared to herself that she would have been as gentle a stepmother as ever loved another woman's children, had these two known how to bear themselves like the son and daughter of a Marquis. Seeing what they were,—and what were her own children,—how these struggled to repudiate that rank which her own were born to adorn and protect, was it not natural that she should hate them, and profess that she should wish them to be out of the way? They could not be made to get out of the way, but Lady Frances might at any rate be repressed. Therefore she determined to stop the correspondence.
She did stop the second letter,—and told her daughter that she had done so.
"Papa didn't say I wasn't to have my letters," pleaded Lady Frances.
"Your papa did not suppose for a moment that you would submit to anything so indecent."
"It is not indecent."
"I shall make myself the judge of that. You are now in my care. Your papa can do as he likes when he comes back." There was a long altercation, but it ended in victory on the part of the Marchioness. The young lady, when she was told that, if necessary, the postmistress in the village should be instructed not to send on any letter addressed to George Roden, believed in the potency of the threat. She felt sure also that she would be unable to get at any letters addressed to herself if the quasi-parental authority of the Marchioness were used to prevent it. She yielded, on the condition, however, that one letter should be sent; and the Marchioness, not at all thinking that her own instructions would have prevailed with the post-mistress, yielded so far.
The tenderness of the letter readers can appreciate and understand without seeing it expressed in words. It was very tender, full of promises, and full of trust. Then came the short passage in which her own uncomfortable position was explained;—"You will understand that there has come one letter which I have not been allowed to see. Whether mamma has opened it I do not know, or whether she has destroyed it. Though I have not seen it, I take it as an assurance of your goodness and truth. But it will be useless for you to write more till you hear from me again; and I have promised that this, for the present, shall be my last to you. The last and the first! I hope you will keep it till you have another, in order that you may have something to tell you how well I love you." As she sent it from her she did not know how much of solace there was even in the writing of a letter to him she loved, nor had she as yet felt how great was the torment of remaining without palpable notice from him she loved.