"I wrote to him lately," said Mrs. Brookes, "and the letter did not reach him; so I suppose I directed it indistinctly."
Clare sat down at the table, and in a large bold hand wrote the address which Harriet had given upon the envelope.
"You are sending Mr. Dallas these letters that he may read them, as his mother is unable?" asked Clare, to whom the forbidden subject of Mrs. Carruthers's son always offered more or less temptation.
"Yes, ma'am," replied the old woman; "I am pretty sure they come from Mr. Felton, and ought to be seen to."
"And who is Mr. Felton?" said Clare, rising and laying down her pen. "I'll post them as I pass through the village," she added.
"Mr. Felton is Mrs. Carruthers's brother," said Mrs. Brookes. "He has been in America many years, but she said something lately about his coming home."
Clare said no more, but took her leave, and went away. She posted the packet for George Dallas at the village, and, as she rode on, her fair face bore the impress of a painful recollection. She was thinking of the morning on which she had ventured to send the warning to him who was so unworthy of the fancies she had cherished--him of whom she could not think without a shudder, of whom she hardly dared to think at all. When the post was delivered the following morning at the Sycamores, a large packet was placed before Miss Carruthers. It was directed to her, and contained two numbers of the Piccadilly, with two instalments of George's serial story, and on the fly leaf of one were the words, "From Paul Ward."
[CHAPTER XX]
ONCE MORE TIDED OVER.
An air of respectability and the presence of good taste characterized the house in Queen-street, Mayfair, now occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Routh. These things were inseparable from a dwelling of Harriet's. She had the peculiar feminine talent for embellishing the place she lived in, however simple and small were the means at her disposal. The lodgings at South Molton-street had never had the comfortless look and feeling of lodgings, and now there was apparently no lack of money to make the new home all that a house of its size and capabilities need be. Harriet moved about her present dwelling, not as she had moved about her former home, indeed, with happy alacrity, but with the same present judgment, the same critical eye; and though all she did now was done mechanically, it was done thoroughly.