I think my grandfather must have led them a life;
there is a peacefulness upon them that suggests deliverance. He has
been dead just five weeks.

But the old house will see quiet days enough now. I have wandered
all over it, and find it a beautiful place in itself, although it is
so stuffed with wool-work, vile china, gildings, wax flowers, and
indescribable mantel-piece atrocities, that there is not a simple or
restful corner anywhere. Yet I find myself touched by its very
hideousness, when I think that it probably looked even so, smelt
even so stale and sweet, in the days of my dear father's boyhood.
There is a picture in the large drawing-room that gives me infinite
pleasure. It is a portrait of my own grandmother with papa in a
white frock on her knees, and my poor Aunt Fanny beside her, a neat
little smiling girl in pink, with very long drawers. There is
something in the young mother's face that, at first sight, made my
father's smile rise clearly to my memory. I have since tried to
recall the vision, but in vain.

My father's half-brother, George Fletcher, a widower with a large
family, who lives four miles from here, came to see me this
afternoon, and I took a great dislike to him. (Did I hear you say
"Of course"?) But really, dearest, these introductions are very
painful; it is most unpleasant to have the undesirable stranger
thrust upon one in the guise of friend and protector, to find
oneself standing on a footing of inevitable familiarity with people
whose hands one had rather not touch. He kissed me, Constantia, but
he certainly will not do so again. Fortunately, I like my two old
ladies; things might be worse.

To-morrow my lawyer comes from London to speak to me on business. I
shall be glad when the interview is over, for I understand nothing
at all about business matters. I can indeed barely grasp the fact
that I have come into possession of land and money. Heaven only
knows what I am to do with it all.

Write to me; write soon. You seem further away from me to-day than
you did last night; and yet I should miss you more if I could
realise my own existence. Can you make your way through these
contradictions? It seems to me this evening that I, Emilia, am still
beside you, that some one else sits here in exile with nothing
written on the page of her future, not even by the finger of Hope.
Good night, dearest.

Yours ever and always,