“Florence,”—as I entered—“I have a package for you, sent under cover to myself. I am afraid that this will prove a sad trial to you; but as you have your own self to thank for it, I am in hopes, for your sake, it will not occasion you much heart-grief. I am playing the part of Job’s comforters; but I cannot help saying to you, that you should remember how you speak of the absent, for sooner or later, they always are informed of bad speeches by some injudicious friend.”
“What does this long preface lead to, Uncle Alton,” said I, with a smile, though my heart felt heavy as lead, and as cold. “Surely I am not mixed up in any of the neighborhood slander, I hope. I always thought that you did me the justice to imagine that I care little, and talk less, of the worthies who compose the society attainable at Alton.”
My uncle, by this time, had handed me the package which he had been separating from its envelop; and he now coldly, I may say sternly, addressed me,
“Hugh Dudley, Florence, has written me that you and himself were engaged—solemnly pledged to each other to wed the coming summer. From your speech, made in public, in the presence of his friends and relative, from whom he has received the information, he now releases you from your chains, that he thinks must have been galling, to call forth from you, in public, so unprovoked, so cruel a speech. What renders it still more stinging, was the fact, that Mr. Hilton, one of the gentlemen present, has ever been an enemy of Dudley’s, and on his return home (for he lives not very far from him) repeated it among a certain set. After Dudley heard of this he gave the more ready credence to his aunt’s letter, which came whilst the subject was in agitation in his thoughts. He wrote to me, as your nearest friend and protector, explaining his conduct, and requesting me to hand you your letters. It has grieved me to hear of this conduct, heartless as I must call it, from my sister’s child.”
I felt like throwing myself at my uncle’s feet, and begging him to plead for me with Hugh in my great misery; but, at this moment I looked up, and saw Mrs. Dudley standing near the entrance, and peering on me with such a smile of malicious triumph, that crushing back my real feelings of agony with my al-conquering pride, I said lightly, though it seemed as if my heart were weeping blood the while—
“Do not trouble yourself, uncle, about my incapacity for bearing this, especially as you say it was brought on me by my own means. Inform Col. Dudley when you write, that I accept my release with thanks, and never have, nor could ever claim relationship with some of his kin, but with the same feelings of loathing and disgust I experience when some hideous and dangerous reptile crosses my path.”
I was nerved by my anger against Mrs. Dudley to say this, and to act the part I assumed, of carelessness, for I took up the package with a light laugh, thanked my uncle, and dropped a very lowly reverence to her as I approached the door, saying, “I hope, my dear madam, that your truly Christian heart is now at rest, having seen the end of our game, begun to relieve the tedium or worse of a country-house, blessed with such an inmate as your venerable self.”
I have a dim recollection of seeing her eyes open wide and still wider with perfect amaze, and the words “heartless flirt,” fell from her lips. I reached my room, though my pride was fast ebbing, and locked myself in. I opened the bundle—my own letters came tumbling therefrom, and one from him. I put it here, that with the record of my willful error, its punishment may also be seen.
“Miss Walton,—I return you your letters, and your vows of love—when the substance is not possessed, how worthless is the shadow. I scorn myself for having loved one who could so wantonly trifle with a trustful, loving heart, which has been taken when proffered, to throw away as a worthless object. May you be happy, but that I am afraid you will not be. I hope that you will be more careful of the next heart that you may witch to love you. At least, never say of him in the presence of either friends or enemies, “he will do well enough to amuse one’s self with in the country!” I again say, may you be happy, and as my happiness can only be in forgetting you, I shall never seek to hear of you; and rest easy that this will be the last letter with which you will ever be troubled from the hand of
Hugh Dudley.”