I answered with some warmth that my letter had not been unnecessary, but urgent and important, and if she persisted in withholding it from my father I should deliver it myself.
"Cousin Mary," said Nessy, "I know perfectly what your letter is, having opened and read it, and while I am as little as yourself in sympathy with what is going on here, I happen to know that your father has set his heart on this entertainment, and therefore I do not choose that it shall be put off."
I replied hotly that in opening my letter to my father she had taken an unwarrantable liberty, and then (losing myself a little) I asked her by what right did she, who had entered my father's house as a dependent, dare to keep his daughter's letter from him.
"Cousin Mary," said Nessy, in the same impassive tone, "you were always self-willed, selfish, and most insulting as a child, and I am sorry to see that neither marriage nor education at a convent has chastened your ungovernable temper. But I have told you that I do not choose that you shall injure your father's health by disturbing his plans, and you shall certainly not do so."
"Then take care," I answered, "that in protecting my father's health you do not destroy it altogether."
In spite of her cold and savourless nature, she understood my meaning, for after a moment of silence she said:
"Cousin Mary, you may do exactly as you please. Your conduct in the future, whatever it may be, will be no affair of mine, and I shall not consider that I am in any way responsible for it."
At last I began to receive anonymous letters. They came from various parts of Ellan and appeared to be in different handwritings. Some of them advised me to fly from the island, and others enclosed a list of steamers' sailings.
Only a woman who has been the victim of this species of cowardly torture can have any idea of the shame of it, and again and again I asked myself if I ought not to escape from my husband's house before he returned.
But Price seemed to find a secret joy in the anonymous letters, saying she believed she knew the source of them: and one evening towards the end, she came running into my room with a shawl over her head, a look of triumph in her face, and an unopened letter in her hand.