"Aren't you well?" said her mother. "Does your head ache?"
"Well? certainly, nicely; never better, mamma dear," said Eva, caressingly, coming and seating herself on her mother's knee, and putting her arm around her neck—"never better, mother."
"Well, Eva, then I am glad of it. I just wanted a few minutes alone with you to-night. I have got something to tell you"—and she drew a letter from her pocket. "Here's this letter from Mr. Sydney; I want to read you something from it."
"Oh dear mamma! what's the use? Don't you think it rather stupid, reading letters?"
"My dear child, Mr. Sydney is such a good man, and so devoted to you."
"I haven't the least objection, mamma, to his being a good man. Long may he be so. But as to his being devoted to me, I am sorry for it."
"At least, Eva, just read this letter—there's a dear; and I am sure you must see how like a gentleman he writes."
Eva took the letter from her mother's hand, and ran it over hurriedly.
"All no use, mamma, dear," she said, when she had done. "It won't hurt him. He'll get over this just as people do with the chicken pox. The fact is, mamma, Mr. Sydney is a man that can't bear to be balked in anything that he has once undertaken to do. It is not that he loves me so very dreadfully, but he has set out to have me. If he could have got me, ten to one, he would have tired of me before now. You know he said that he never cared anything about a girl that he knew he could have. It is simply and only because I have kept myself out of his way and been hard to get that he wants me. If he once had me for a wife, I should be all well enough, but I should be got, and he'd be off after the next thing he could not get. That's just his nature, mamma."