“My dear Mr. Tancred,
“I have heard of the dreadful anxiety you are in about dearest Mrs. Tancred, and must send you a line to tell you how deeply, deeply I simpathize with you!” (The first i in simpathize had looked to the writer a little odd, but not enough so to cause alteration of the vowel.) “If you could let me know how she gets over it, I should be so, so grateful to you! I hope you will not think me impertinent for writing to you, but I am so miserable about you both!”
“Your deeply grieved
“Bonnybell.”
“P.S.—I should not tell you at such a moment, only that I cannot bear you to hear from any one else, that Lord Bletchley has persuaded me to marry him. I did not at all wish to at first—you know that I always rather hated the idea of marrying—but I cannot stay on here, as complickations have arisen.”
Miss Ransome had meant to have run that doubtful k to earth in the dictionary, but in the ardour of composition had forgotten this necessary precaution. “Of course, Edward will understand that Colonel Slammer has been making love to me!” At this point the writer had laid down her pen, and rested her pensive head upon a left hand from which some very fine diamonds shot their reconciling sparkle. “It seems brutal to tell him just at this moment, of all others, but I know that it is the truest kindness. He is so good-hearted that he will feel the blow less while he is soothing poor dear Camilla’s last moments.” She glanced at her betrothal ring. “I know I shall be glad by-and-by; but it does seem rather dearly bought just now.” With a sigh she resumed her pen—
“We are both rather alone in the world, and I am sure he will be kind to me. We shall be much more like father and daughter than husband and wife.”
Camilla laid down the letter. “It seems rather soon,” she said; and that was the only comment which the remarriage of their connection with their protégée ever evoked between husband and wife.
At the time it was being uttered Bonnybell was sitting on a sofa in the Slammer drawing-room beside her fiancé. A barrier of sofa-cushions had—accidentally as it appeared to Tom—risen between them. Across, but unable to level them, the lover leaned and beamed.
“And you are quite sure that you never were in love with any one else before?”
“Never!”