SUICIDE.
Piccadilly, April.
Considering the extent to which I have been digressing, it will be perhaps desirable, before I plunge again into the stormy current of my narrative, to define in a few words what, in the language of diplomacy, is termed "the situation." After I have done so, I shall feel much obliged if you will kindly "grasp" it. Briefly, it is as follows: I am telegraphed for in frantic terms by an old lady who is under the firm impression that I am engaged to be married to her daughter. I am violently in love with that daughter, but for certain reasons I have felt it my duty to account for my extraordinary conduct by informing her confidentially that I have occasional fits of temporary insanity. That daughter, I am positively assured by her mother, is no less violently attached to my most dear and intimate friend. My most dear and intimate friend returns the affection. Mamma threatens that if I do not marry her daughter, rather than allow my most dear and intimate friend to do so, she will ally the young lady to an affluent native of Bombay. So much is known. On the following points I am still in the dark:—
First, What on earth does Lady Broadhem mean by telling me to come immediately, as delay may be fatal?—to whom? to me or to Lady Ursula, or herself? My knowledge of her ladyship induces me to incline towards the latter hypothesis; the suspense is, however, none the less trying.
Second, Does Lady Ursula imagine that I know how she and Grandon feel towards each other?
Third, Is Grandon under the impression that I have actually proposed and been accepted by Lady Ursula?
Fourth, Does my conduct occasionally amount to something more than eccentricity or not?
Fifth—and this was very unpleasant—Shall I find Grandon at our joint abode? And if so, what shall I say to him?
Sixth, Have Grandon and Lady Ursula met, and did anything pass between them?
Thank goodness Grandon was at the House. So, after a hurried toilet, I went on to Grosvenor Square. The young ladies were both out. Lady Bridget had taken advantage of the chaperonage of a newly-married rather fast female cousin, to go to a ball. Lady Ursula had gone to a solitary tea with a crabbed old aunt. Lady Broadhem was in her own sitting-room, lying on a couch behind a table covered with papers. She looked wearily up when I entered, and held out a thin hand for me to do what I liked with. "How good of you to come, dear Frank!" she said. It was the first time she had ever called me Frank, and I knew she expected me to acknowledge it by pressing her fingers, so I squeezed them affectionately. "Broadhem said if I wanted to make sure of you I ought to have brought Ursula's name into the telegraph, but I told him her mother's would do as well."