“Ever with respect and love, “Your grateful, but unhappy friend, “CALANTHA.” Lady Avondale was more calm when she had thus written. The next morning a letter was placed in her hand. Her heart beat high. It was from Mortanville Priory:—but it was from Lady Trelawney, in answer to one she had sent her, and not from Glenarvon. “Dearest cousin,” said Lady Trelawney, “I have not had time to write to you one word before. Of all the places I ever was at, this is the most perfectly delightful. Had I a spice in me of romance, I would attempt to describe it; but, in truth, I cannot. Tell Sophia we expect her for certain next week; and, if you wish to be diverted from all black thoughts, join our party. I received your gloomy letter after dinner. I was sitting on a couch by ——, shall I tell you by whom?—by Lord Glenarvon himself. At the moment in which it was delivered, for the post comes in here at nine in the evening, he smiled a little as he recognized the hand; and, when I told him you were ill, that smile became an incredulous laugh; for he knows well enough people are never so ill as they say. Witness himself: he is wonderfully recovered: indeed, he is grown perfectly delightful. I thought him uncommonly stupid all this summer, which I attribute now to you; for you encouraged him in his whims and woes. Here, at least, he is all life and good humour. Lady Augusta says he is not the same man; but sentiment, she affirms, undermines any constitution; and you are rather too much in that style. “After all, my dear cousin, it is silly to make yourself unhappy about any man. I dare say you thought Lord Glenarvon very amiable: so do I:—and you fancied he was in love with you, as they call it; and I could fancy the same: and there is one here, I am sure, may fancy it as well as any of us: but it is so absurd to take these things seriously. It is his manner; and he owns himself that a _grande passion_ bores him to death; and that if you will but leave him alone, he finds a little absence has entirely restored his senses. “By the bye, did you give him ... but that is a secret. Only I much suspect that he has made over all that you have given him to another. Do the same by him, therefore; and have enough pride to shew him that you are not so weak and so much in his power as he imagines. I shall be quite provoked if you write any more to him. He shews all your letters: I tell you this as a friend: only, now, pray do not get me into a scrape, or repeat it.