ller: his family is among the most ancient in
England, and his father's estate covers half a county. All this Mamma
tells me, with the most earnest air in the world, whenever I declaim
upon his impertinence or disagreeability (is there such a word? there
ought to be). "Well," said I to-day, "what's that to me?" "It may be a
great deal to you," replied Mamma, significantly, and the blood rushed
from my face to my heart. She could not, Eleanor, she could not mean,
after all her kindness to Clarence, and in spite of all her penetration
into my heart,--oh, no, no,--she could not. How terribly suspicious this
love makes one!

But if I disliked Lord Borodaile at first, I have hated him of late;
for, somehow or other, he is always in the way. If I see Clarence
hastening through the crowd to ask me to dance, at that very instant
up steps Lord Borodaile with his cold, changeless face, and his haughty
old-fashioned bow, and his abominable dark complexion; and Mamma smiles;
and he hopes he finds me disengaged; and I am hurried off; and poor
Clarence looks so disappointed and so wretched! You have no idea how
ill-tempered this makes me. I could not help asking Lord Borodaile
yesterday if he was never going abroad again, and the hateful creature
played with his cravat, and answered "Never!" I was in hopes that my
sullenness would drive his lordship away: tout au contraire; "Nothing,"
said he to me the other day, when he was in full pout, "nothing is so
plebeian as good-humour!"

I wish, then, Eleanor, that he could see your governess: she must be
majesty itself in his eyes!

Ah, dearest, how we belie ourselves! At this moment, when you might
think, from the idle, rattling, silly flow of my letter, that my heart
was as light and free as it was when we used to play on the green lawn,
and under the sunny trees, in the merry days of our childhood, the tears
are running down my cheeks; see where they have fallen on the page,
and my head throbs as if my thoughts were too full and heavy for it to
contain. It is past one! I am alone, and in my own room. Mamma is gone
to a rout at H---- House, but I knew I should not meet Clarence there,
and so said I was ill, and remained at home. I have done so often of
late, whenever I have learned from him that he was not going to the same
place as Mamma. Indeed, I love much better to sit alone and think
over his words and looks; and I have drawn, after repeated attempts, a
profile likeness of him; an