"Many families are so. Mr. Paler was worse than this, for he always liked to take the letters from the facteur himself."
"Who is Mr. Paler?" she questioned.
"I have been living as governess in his family in Paris. Mrs. Penn, may I ask you whether I left a handkerchief at Mrs. Howard's the day I went there?"
"Not that I know of. I did not hear of it. Have you lost one?"
"Yes; one that I valued: it was a keepsake. I know I had it in the carriage in going to Marden, but I remember nothing of it subsequently. When I got home I missed it."
"You most likely dropped it in stepping out of the carriage."
"Yes, I fear so."
She quitted the room with a remark that her time was up. I opened my letter, which was in Emily de Mellissie's handwriting; and read as follows:—
"The idea of your making all this fuss! Though I suppose it is mamma's fault, not yours. She is neither poison nor a tiger, and therefore will not do the house irretrievable damage. It's not my fault if Alfred has taken this gastric fever, and I am detained here. I'd rather be in the wilds of Africa, I do assure you, scampering over the sandy desert on a mad pony, than condemned to be pent up in sickchambers. Fancy what it is! Alfred reduced to a skeleton, in his bed on alternate days, taking nothing but tisane, and that sort of slops, and lamenting that he wont get over it: Madame de Mellissie in her bed, groaning under an agonizing attack of sciatica; and I doing duty between the two. It's dreadful. I should come off to Chandos to-morrow and leave them till they were better, but that the world would call me hard-hearted, and any other polite name it could lay its tongue to. Every second day he seems nearly as well as I am, and says I shall be sure to start for Chandos on the next. When the next comes, there he is, down again with fever. And that is my present fate!—which is quite miserable enough without your reproaching me for being thoughtless, and all the rest of it. How I should get through the dreary days but for some novels and a few callers, I don't know; but the novels are not exciting, and the visitors are stupid. Paris is empty just now, and as dull as a dungeon. Don't go worrying me with any more letters reflecting on my 'prudence,' or I shall send them back to you. If mamma orders you to write, tell her plainly that you wont. Pray who is Anne Hereford, that she should be allowed to disturb the peace of Chandos? Indeed, Harry, she is nobody! and you need not stand on ceremony with her. I am sorry that her staying there just now should be so very inconvenient—as you hint that it is. Mamma has a great dislike to have people in the house, I know; but the leaving her was really not my fault, as you ought to see. I will be over as soon as I can, for my own sake, and relieve you of her:—you cannot form an idea what it is here, no soirées going on, no fêtes, no anything. But if you really cannot allow her to remain until then, the shortest way will be to let her go to Nulle.
"Love to mamma, and believe me, your affectionate sister,