When urged further, he only laughed, and, lighting his cigar, puffed away for a moment or two; after which he said in his careless way: "After all, it mightn't have been a bad dodge of me to send the Doctor off to Turkey. He was an old admirer, wasn't he?"
After this, Kitty, to allude to the subject was impossible, and here I had to leave it. But who could possibly have insinuated such a scandal concerning me? or how could it have occurred to malignant ingenuity to couple my name with that of a person in his station? I cried the entire evening in my own room as I thought over the disgrace to which the bare allusion exposed me.
Is there not a fatality, then, I ask you, in everything that ties us to Ireland? Are not the chance references to that country full of low and unhappy associations? and yet you can talk to me of "when we come back again."
We are daily becoming more uneasy about James. He is now several weeks gone, and not a line has reached us to say where he is, or what success has attended him. I know his high-spirited nature so well, and how any reverse or disappointment would inevitably drive him to the wildest excesses, that I am in agony about him. A letter in your brother's hand is now here awaiting him, so that I can perceive that even Robert is as ignorant of his fate as we are.
All these cares, dearest, will have doubtless thrown their shadows over this dreary epistle, the reflex of my darkened spirit. Bear with and pity me, dearest Kitty; and even when calmer reason refuses to follow the more headlong impulses of my feeling, still care for, still love Your ever heart-attached and devoted
Mary Anne Dodd.
P. S. The post has just arrived, bringing a letter for Lord G. in James's hand. It was addressed Bregenz, and has been several days on the road. How I long to learn its tidings! But I cannot detain this; so again good-bye.