"Indeed, indeed, Glenmore, I can hardly tell you how. But first, whenever I _was_ in public, you were always absent; or, if not absent, at least occupied with others and not with myself. I sat alone, _ennuyé_, and with a feeling of desertion. At the _écarté_ parties, especially, I felt desolate. To them, you know, no young, unmarried ladies were admitted; and the persons who composed the society were either engaged in play, or else those who sat out were so engaged, two and two, in conversation at distant parts of the room, that I felt awkward in attempting to join them. Oh! how I have sat, night after night, in those fine rooms, thinking how little they afforded happiness, and wishing myself any where else! The first person who paid me any attention was Mr. Leslie Winyard. I found him agreeable and entertaining; and neither saw nor heard, in his manner or conversation, any thing that the whole world might not have seen or heard with me. If others spoke to me, it was a matter of form, or only a passing word, without seeming to care whether I answered or not; while he, on the contrary, always listened to what I had to say with apparent interest,--always seemed impressed with a wish to please me whenever we met; and thus our intimacy commenced. Deprived of you, Glenmore, I thought there was no harm in amusing myself in public during the time that I was there; instead of being quite _délaissée_. _You_ know how unwilling I was to enter on a life of dissipation." Lord Glenmore again sighed, as if in assent to the truth of these words; and blamed himself inwardly that he had ever suffered Lady Glenmore to mingle, unprotected by himself, in society which now, for the first time, appeared to him, in its full force, to be of such dangerous tendency, that he felt he ought to have known better. "But your greater intimacy abroad," he went on to ask, "Georgina? for it was abroad that these notes seem to have been written. Did you receive none such before your departure?" "None, on my sacred word," she replied. "Then how came you to admit them?" "Oh! I can scarcely tell. Sometimes we were left in doubt, the evening before, whether our party was to take place on the following day or not, and he wrote to me to know _how_ it was to be. Then I sometimes returned fatigued with our day's excursion, and a note of inquiry would arrive. Then another morning would come flowers, another music, and with all these came notes." "Did you ever answer them?" "Very seldom, for you know I hate writing; and when I did it was only a literal word of reply to some question about the hour at which we were to ride or dine out. The notes themselves will tell you this, Glenmore, for they complain of never being answered." "But if you did not answer, you valued them, Georgina, or you would not have preserved them."