‘This reached me a week ago,’ she said. ‘I could not show it to my father, nor to dear Aunt Ann. Had you not been coming, I must have written to you, Mr. Brownlow. Suspense was intolerable; and, if you yourself knew, I was sure you would tell me the truth.’
She put the letter into my hand. I recognised the writing at once, and with a feeling of shame and sorrow, amounting almost to horror, looked her in the face. God! how glorious it was in its agony—courage which could meet anything which must be; act on anything which was right; and, with all, such invincible sweetness!
I read the letter.
‘Silly Country Girl—Listen to me, and cease to follow what you will never win and try to reach honours which belong to bolder hearts than yours. You are thrown aside and done with, like his old glove, his old shoe. Know, then—but do not tell it, for the day you do tell shall be the last safe one of your life—that he is married already; and to me, who am far cleverer than you, and can please him better, love him better than you, ignorant little peasant, could ever please or love.’
‘Devil!’ was all I said, as I finished this melodramatic effusion, for anger and disgust choked me.
‘It is so, then?’—from Nellie, watching me.
‘You asked me to be truthful?—It is. I know the handwriting too well.’
‘Whose is it?’ she asked, in a low but steady voice.
‘That of the person—the Frenchwoman—whom he has married.’
‘Mademoiselle Fédore, who used to be at Hover?’