"So far so good," thought I, pausing, "but then suppose he should, from this dry note, really believe me so cold and stupid as not to have felt his pleasing qualities. Suppose now it were possible he liked me after all!" Then hastily, and half ashamed of myself, I added these few lines:
"I have not quite deserved this contempt from you, and, in that consolatory reflection, I take my leave; not in anger my lord, but only with the steady determination so to profit by the humiliating lesson you have given me as never to expose myself to the like contempt again.
"Your most obedient servant,
"HARRIETTE WILSON."
Having put my letter into the post, I passed a restless night: and the next morning, heard the knock of the twopenny postman in extreme agitation. He brought me, as I suspected, an answer from Argyle, which is subjoined.
"You are not half vain enough, dear Harriette. You ought to have been quite certain that any man who had once met you could not fail in a second appointment but from unavoidable accident—and, if you were only half as pleased with Thursday morning, as I was, you will meet me to-morrow in the same place at four. Pray, pray,55 come.
"LORNE."
I kissed the letter and put it into my bosom, grateful for the weight it had taken off my heart. Not that I was so far gone in love as my readers may imagine; but I had suffered from wounded pride, and, in fact, I was very much tête monté.
The sensations which Argyle had inspired me with were the warmest, nay, the first, of the same nature, I had ever experienced. Nevertheless, I could not forgive him quite so easily as this neither. I recollect what Frederick Lamb had said about his vanity. "No doubt," thought I, "he thinks it was nothing to have paraded me up and down that stupid turnpike road, in the vain hope of seeing him. It shall now be his turn: and I gloried in the idea of revenge."
The hour of Argyle's appointment drew nigh, arrived, and passed away, without my leaving my house. To Frederick Lamb I related everything, presented him with Argyle's letter, and acquainted him with my determination not to meet his grace.
"How good!" said Frederick Lamb, quite delighted. "We dine together to-day at Lady Holland's, and I mean to ask him, before everybody at table, what he thinks of the air about the turnpike in Somerstown."
The next day I was surprised by a letter, not, as I anticipated, from Argyle, but from the late Tom Sheridan, only son of Richard Brinsley Sheridan. I had, by mere accident, become acquainted with that very interesting young man when quite a child, from the circumstance of his having paid great attention to one of my elder sisters.
He requested me to allow him to speak a few words to me, wherever I pleased. Frederick Lamb having gone to Brockett Hall in Hertfordshire, I desired him to call on me.