On arriving at Southampton we considered it our duty to communicate immediately with Miss Latchley, for the purpose of ascertaining if we could render her any temporary assistance. Perhaps it was more than she deserved; but we could not forget her sex, though she had done everything in her power to disguise it; and, besides, the lucky blow with the life-preserver, which she administered to Hyams, was a service for which we could not be otherwise than grateful. Jack Wilkinson was selected as the medium of communication. He found the strong Lavinia alone, and perfectly composed.
"I wish never more," said she, "to hear the name of Pettigrew. It is associated in my mind with weakness, fanaticism, and vacillation; and I shall ever feel humbled at the reflection that I bowed my woman's pride to gaze on the surface of so shallow and opaque a pool! And yet, why regret? The image of the sun is reflected equally from the Bœotian marsh and the mirror of the clear Ontario! Tell your uncle," continued she, after a pause, "that as he is nothing to me, so I wish to be nothing to him. Let us mutually extinguish memory. Ha, ha, ha!—so they fed him, you say, upon broccoli?
"But I have one message to give, though not to him. The youth who, in the nobility of his soul, declared his passion for my intellect—where is he? I tarry beneath this roof but for him. Do my message fairly, and say to him that if he seeks a communion of soul—no! that is the common phrase of the slaves of antiquated superstition—if he yearns for a grand amalgamation of essential passion and power, let him hasten hither, and Lavinia Latchley is ready to accompany him to the prairie or the forest, to the torrid zone, or to the confines of the arctic seas!"
"I shall deliver your message, ma'am," said Jack, "as accurately as my abilities will allow." And he did so.
Rogers of ours writhed uneasily in his seat.
"I'll tell you what it is, my fine fellows," said he, "I don't look upon this quite as a laughing matter. I am really sorry to have taken in the old woman, though I don't see how we could well have helped it; and I would far rather, Jack, that she had fixed her affections upon you than on me. I shall get infernally roasted at the mess if this story should transpire. However, I suppose there's only one answer to be given. Pray, present my most humble respects, and say how exceedingly distressed I feel that my professional engagements will not permit me to accompany her in her proposed expedition."
Jack reported the answer in due form.
"Then," said Lavinia, drawing herself up to her full height, and shrouding her visage in a black veil, "tell him that for his sake I am resolved to die a virgin!"
I presume she will keep her word; at least I have not yet heard that any one has been courageous enough to request her to change her situation. She has since returned to America, and is now, I believe, the president of a female college, the students of which may be distinguished from the rest of their sex, by their uniform adoption of bloomers.
Printed by William Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh.