"God will not, I am sure, judge you so severely as you judge yourself, poor Eliza," I replied, and then left her.
Eliza, generally speaking, was more cheerful than persons usually are when they are dying; and nobody expected that poor Eliza would live beyond five and twenty.
We were often invited to little family tea-parties, where we passed our time comfortably enough, though most gay London ladies would have been bored to death; but I thank my God for bestowing on me a contented disposition.
Meyler wrote to me constantly: sometimes he was melancholy; then he determined to join me whether I would or not; he next declared that I was cold and selfish, and that he would forget me: at last, he almost teased me out of a promise, or rather a half-promise that, if at the end of the year there were new obstacles thrown in the way of my joining Worcester, or his lordship's returning to me, I would put myself at once under Meyler's protection.
In the meantime Lord Worcester corresponded with me as regularly and lovingly as I could possibly desire, and so did Fanny. In answer to one of my letters to her, written nearly three months after my arrival in Devonshire, I received the following:
"MY DEAR HARRIETTE,—Many thanks for your last kind letter, in which you enclose my Lord Worcester's, containing so much news of Colonel Parker. I was indeed in want of consolation; for I am very melancholy, and my cough is still rather troublesome, although not bad enough to have prevented my attendance at the Opera, which closed but last night for the season.
"All the gay world are constantly asking me about you. As to Mr. Meyler, we have seen but little of him. Last night however we observed him in the pit; and so did Amy, who was of our party: she immediately sent somebody down to request him to join us, and her messenger returned, bringing Meyler with him. He looks very well, and, as usual, particularly interesting. He asked Julia and me at least a thousand questions about you. Amy, to change the disagreeable subject, invited him to sup with her; but he begged to be excused, provokingly adding, that her house would make him melancholy, by reminding him of you. Amy could scarcely conceal her ill-humour at this answer. Julia asked him if he really meant to say he had not forgotten you all this time? and he seriously declared that he had never loved you better nor any being else half so well: and then the poor little man sighed quite naturally, as though he could not help it; but, though I do not mean to hurt your vanity, I fancy there was something of ill-health in that sigh of his. However, perhaps this is a mere fancy of mine, for Mr. Meyler himself, who ought to be the best judge, professes to be in remarkably good health, and he is known to ride very hard in Leicestershire. But there is something so remarkably transparent about Meyler's skin. It is, in fact, a churchyard-skin, like my own I think. I hope I am mistaken too: for it would be hard to die, in the bloom of youth and beauty, beloved by everybody, and with thirty thousand a year.
"My children, thank God, are all well, although I really feared my dear Louisa would have died last week, owing to my extreme folly in having suffered myself to be persuaded into administering one of Inglish's Scot's pills to the poor baby, out of sister Paragon's box. All Pandora's box of evils could scarcely have done more mischief. The child was absolutely convulsed with pain, while provoking sister Paragon looked on, calmly declaring that it was the first duty of an aperient, to gripe the patient as much as possible.
"Pray write a very long letter soon, and believe me, at all times, your most affectionate sister,
"FANNY PARKER."
[CHAPTER XXX]
His Grace of Beaufort had passed his word, as to the regular quarterly payment of an allowance which Worcester stipulated should be paid me if he left England; yet four months had now elapsed without my having been able to obtain a single shilling from the duke, or even an answer to my letters, in which I assured him that all my ready money was gone and that I was entirely destitute of the means of existence.