Chapter Thirty Six.
Something by Post.
It was a most extraordinary thing, but, probably from uneasiness, Mrs Thorne was the first down next morning. Hazel had had a sleepless night, and it was not till six o’clock that she dropped off to sleep heavily, and did not awaken till past eight, when, hot, feverish, and with her head thick and throbbing, she hurriedly dressed herself and went down.
Fate plays some strange tricks with us at times; and on this, the first morning for months that Hazel had not received the letters herself, Mrs Thorne was there to take them.
“Three letters for Hazel,” she said to herself. “Dear me, how strange! Three letters, and all bearing the Plumton postmark!”
She changed the envelopes from hand to hand, and shuffled them in a fidgety way, as if they were cards.
“I feel very much displeased, for Hazel has no right to be receiving letters from gentlemen; and I am sure if Edward Geringer were here he would thoroughly approve of the course I take. She shall not have these letters at all. It is my duty as Hazel’s mamma to suppress such correspondence. Often and often have I said to her, ‘Hazel, my child, under any circumstances never forget that you are a lady.’”
There was another close examination of the letters, and then Mrs Thorne went on—
“No young lady in my time would have ventured upon a clandestine correspondence with a gentleman; and now, to my horror as a mamma, I wake to the fact that my daughter is corresponding with three gentlemen at once. Oh, Hazel, Hazel, Hazel! it is a bitter discovery for me to make that a child of mine has been deceiving me. I wonder who they can be from.”