te roses and the Brussels veil, which Lady Jane is most
anxious for.

"Sincerely yours,
"Charlotte Callonby."

How much did these few and apparently common-place lines convey to me?
First, my visit was not only expected, but actually looked forward to,
canvassed--perhaps I might almost whisper to myself the flattery--wished
for. Again, Lady Jane's health was spoken of as precarious, less actual
illness--I said to myself--than mere delicacy requiring the bluer sky and
warmer airs of Italy. Perhaps her spirits were affected--some mental
malady--some ill-placed passion--que sais je? In fact my brain run on
so fast in its devisings, that by a quick process, less logical than
pleasing, I satisfied myself that the lovely Lady Jane Callonby was
actually in love, with whom let the reader guess at. And Lord Callonby
too, about to join the ministry--well, all the better to have one's
father-in-law in power--promotion is so cursed slow now a-days. And
lastly, the sly allusion to the commissions--the mechancete of
introducing her name to interest me. With such materials as these to
build upon, frail as they may seem to others, I found no difficulty in
regarding myself as the dear friend of the family, and the acknowledged
suitor of Lady Jane.

In the midst, however, of all my self-gratulation, my eye fell upon the
letter of Emily Bingham, and I suddenly remembered how fatal to all such
happy anticipations it might prove. I tore it open in passionate haste
and read--

"My dear Mr. Lorrequer--As from the interview we have had this
morning I am inclined to believe that I have gained your affections,
I think that I should ill requite such a state of your feeling for
me, were I to conceal that I cannot return you mine--in fact they
are not mine to bestow. This frank avowal, whatever pain it may
have cost me, I think I owe to you to make. You will perhaps say,
the confession should have been earlier; to which I reply, it should
have been so, had I known, or even guessed at the nature of your
feelings for me. For--and I write it in all truth, and perfect
respect for you--I only saw in your attentions the flirting habits
of a man of the world, with a very uninformed and ignorant girl of
eighteen, with whom as it was his amusement to travel, he deemed it
worth his while to talk.