CHAPTER 1.

“But, my dear Lady Di., indeed you should not let this affair prey so continually upon your spirits,” said Miss Burrage, in the condoling tone of a humble companion —“you really have almost fretted yourself into a nervous fever. I was in hopes that change of air, and change of scene, would have done every thing for you, or I never would have consented to your leaving London; for you know your ladyship’s always better in London than any where else. And I’m sure your ladyship has thought and talked of nothing but this sad affair since you came to Clifton.”

“I confess,” said Lady Diana Chillingworth, “I deserve the reproaches of my friends for giving way to my sensibility, as I do, upon this occasion: but I own I cannot help it. — Oh, what will the world say! What will the world say! — The world will lay all the blame upon me; yet I’m sure I’m the last, the very last person that ought to be blamed.”

“Assuredly,” replied Miss Burrage, “nobody can blame your ladyship; and nobody will, I am persuaded. The blame will all be thrown, where it ought to be, upon the young lady herself.”

“If I could but be convinced of that,” said her ladyship, in a tone of great feeling; “such a young creature, scarcely sixteen, to take such a step! — I am sure I wish to Heaven her father had never made me her guardian. I confess, I was most exceedingly imprudent, out of regard to her family, to take under my protection such a self-willed, unaccountable, romantic girl. Indeed, my dear,” continued Lady Diana Chillingworth, turning to her sister, Lady Frances Somerset, “it was you that misled me. You remember you used to tell me, that Anne Warwick had such great abilities!”—

“That I thought it a pity they had not been well directed,” said Lady Frances.

“And such generosity of temper, and such warm affections!” said Lady Di. —

“That I regretted their not having been properly cultivated.”

“I confess, Miss Warwick was never a great favourite of mine,” said Miss Barrage; “but now that she has lost her best friend —”

“She is likely to find a great number of enemies,” said Lady Frances.

“She has been her own enemy, poor girl! I am sure I pity her,” replied Miss Burrage; “but, at the same time, I must say, that ever since she came to my Lady Di. Chillingworth’s, she has had good advice enough.”

“Too much, perhaps; which is worse than too little,” thought Lady Frances.

“Advice!” repeated Lady Di. Chillingworth: “why, as to that, my conscience, I own, acquits me there; for, to be sure, no young person, of her age, or of any age, had ever more advice, or more good advice, than Miss Warwick had from me; I thought it my duty to advise her, and advise her I did from morning till night, as Miss Burrage very well knows, and will do me the justice, I hope, to say in all companies.”

“That I shall certainly make it a principle to do,” said Miss Burrage. “I am sure it would surprise and grieve you, Lady Frances, to hear the sort of foolish, imprudent things that Miss. Warwick, with all her abilities, used to say. I recollect —”

“Very possibly,” replied Lady Frances; “but why should we trouble ourselves to recollect all the foolish, imprudent things which this poor girl may have said? — This unfortunate elopement is a sufficient proof of her folly and imprudence. With whom did she go off?”

“With nobody,” cried Lady Diana —“there’s the wonder.”

“With nobody! — Incredible. — She had certainly some admirer, some lover, and she was afraid, I suppose, to mention the business to you.”

“No such thing, my dear: there is no love at all in the case: indeed, for my part, I cannot in the least comprehend Miss Warwick, nor ever could. She used, every now and then, to begin and talk to me some nonsense about her hatred of the forms of the world, and her love of liberty, and I know not what; and then she had some female correspondent, to whom she used to write folio sheets, twice a week, I believe; but I could never see any of these letters. Indeed, in town, you know, I could not possibly have leisure for such things; but Miss Burrage, I fancy, has one of the letters, if you have any curiosity to see it. Miss Burrage can tell you a great deal more of the whole business than I can; for you know, in London, engaged as I always was, with scarcely a moment ever to myself, how could I attend to all Anne Warwick’s oddities? I protest I know nothing of the matter, but that, one morning, Miss Warwick was nowhere to be found, and my maid brought me a letter, of one word of which I could not make sense: the letter was found on the young lady’s dressing-table, according to the usual custom of eloping heroines. Miss Burrage, do show Lady Frances the letters — you have them somewhere; and tell my sister all you know of the matter, for I declare, I’m quite tired of it; besides, I shall be wanted at the card-table.”

Lady Diana Chillingworth went to calm her sensibility at the card-table; and Lady Frances turned to Miss Burrage, for further information.

“All I know,” said Miss Burrage, “is, that one night I saw Miss Warwick putting a lock of frightful hair into a locket, and I asked her whose it was. —‘My amiable Araminta’s,’ said Miss Warwick, ‘Is she pretty?’ said I. ‘I have never seen her,’ said Miss Warwick; ‘but I will show you a charming picture of her mind!’— and she put this long letter into my hand. I’ll leave it with your ladyship, if you please; it is a good, or rather a bad hour’s work to read it.”

“Araminta!” exclaimed Lady Frances, looking at the signature of the letter —“this is only a nom de guerre, I suppose.”

“Heaven knows!” answered Miss Burrage; “but Miss Warwick always signed her epistles Angelina, and her unknown friend’s were always signed Araminta. I do suspect that Araminta, whoever she is, was the instigator of this elopement.”

“I wish,” said Lady Frances, examining the post-mark of the letter, “I wish that we could find out where Araminta lives; we might then, perhaps, recover this poor Miss Warwick, before the affair is talked of in the world — before her reputation is injured.”

“It would certainly be a most desirable thing,” said Miss Burrage; “but Miss Warwick has such odd notions, that I question whether she will ever behave like other people; and, for my part, I cannot blame Lady Diana Chillingworth for giving her up. She is one of those young ladies whom it is scarcely possible to manage by common sense.”

“It is certainly true,” said Lady Frances, “that young women of Miss Warwick’s superior abilities require something more than common sense to direct them properly. Young ladies who think of nothing but dress, public amusements, and forming what they call high connexions, are undoubtedly most easily managed, by the fear of what the world will say of them; but Miss Warwick appeared to me to have higher ideas of excellence; and I therefore regret that she should be totally given up by her friends.”

“It is Miss Warwick who has given up her friends,” said Miss Burrage, with a mixture of embarrassment and sarcasm in her manner; “it is Miss Warwick who has given up her friends; not Miss Warwick’s friends who have given up Miss Warwick.”

The letter from the “amiable Araminta,” which Miss Burrage left for the pervsal of Lady Frances Somerset, contained three folio sheets, of which, it is hoped, the following abridgment will be sufficiently ample to satisfy the curiosity even of those who are lovers of long letters:—

“Yes, my Angelina! our hearts are formed for that higher species of friendship, of which common souls are inadequate to form an idea, however their fashionable puerile lips may, in the intellectual inanity of their conversation, profane the term. Yes, my Angelina, you are right — every fibre of my frame, every energy of my intellect, tells me so. I read your letter by moonlight! The air balmy and pure as my Angelina’s thoughts! The river silently meandering! — The rocks! — The woods! — Nature in all her majesty. Sublime confidante! Sympathizing with my supreme felicity. And shall I confess to you, friend of my soul! that I could not refuse myself the pleasure of reading to my Orlando some of those passages in your last, which evince so powerfully the superiority of that understanding, which, if I mistake not strangely, is formed to combat, in all its Proteus forms, the system of social slavery? With what soul-rending eloquence does my Angelina describe the solitariness, the isolation of the heart she experiences in a crowded metropolis! With what emphatic energy of inborn independence does she exclaim against the family phalanx of her aristocratic persecutors!-Surely — surely she will not be intimidated from ‘the settled purpose of her soul’ by the phantom-fear of worldly censure! — The...