same house. Grandmamma's whole
heart was bent upon that marriage, and when he proposed for me I do not disown
that I was very pleased and vain.
    It is in these last months that I have heard about him more, and learned to
know him better - him and myself too, Laura. Some one - some one you know, and
whom I shall always love as a brother - reproached me in former days for a
worldliness about which you talk too sometimes. But it is not worldly to give
yourself up for your family, is it? One cannot help the rank in which one is
born, and surely it is but natural and proper to marry in it. Not that Lord
Farintosh thinks me or any one of his rank. (Here Miss Ethel laughed.) He is the
Sultan, and we, every unmarried girl in society, is his humblest slave. His
Majesty's opinions upon this subject did not suit me, I can assure you; I have
no notion of such pride!
    But I do not disguise from you, dear Laura, that after accepting him, as I
came to know him better, and heard him, and heard of him, and talked with him
daily, and understood Lord Farintosh's character, I looked forward with more and
more doubt to the day when I was to become his wife. I have not learned to
respect him in these months that I have known him, and during which there has
been mourning in our families. I will not talk to you about him; I have no right
- have I? - to hear him speak out his heart, and tell it to any friend. He said
he liked me because I did not flatter him. Poor Malcolm! they all do. What was
my acceptance of him, Laura, but flattery - yes, flattery, and servility to
rank, and a desire to possess it? Would I have accepted plain Malcolm Roy? I
sent away a better than him, Laura.
    These things have been brooding in my mind for some months past. I must have
been but an ill companion for him, and indeed he bore with my waywardness much
more kindly than I ever thought possible; and when four days since we came to
this sad house, where he was to have joined us, and I found only dismay and
wretchedness, and these poor children deprived of a mother, whom I pity, God
help her, for she has been made so miserable, and is now and must be to the end
of her days; as I lay awake,