Your poor fool,
EMILIA.




LETTER XXI.


December 18th.

Thank Heaven that you are here, in the world; I should die if you
were not. Let me think, where shall I begin? At the end; that is
nearest. I have only just come upstairs; I have been shaking in the
dark. They are beasts; I hate them all. I was sitting playing
cribbage with grandmamma after supper, when Uncle George was
announced. He wanted to speak to me, he said. I took him into the
breakfast room, and there he told me in a fat pompous voice that
I--O Dio, my blood still burns to think of it, and the way in which
he said it--that I was getting myself talked about in the
neighbourhood; that probably I didn't know, owing to my foreign
education, that it wasn't the thing here in England to let oneself
be seen constantly alone in the company of a young man; that he
thought it his duty, etc., etc.

"Thank you," said I,--my very skin felt tight,--"I see that I must
be more underhand in my actions, and contrive to see my friends
entirely on the sly."