necessity of getting up at six o'clock, and travelling to Gretna
Green, through that odious North Road, up the Highgate Hill, and over
Finchley Common.

"But when will he ask you?" My dearest Eleanor, that is more than I
can say. To tell you the truth, there is something about Linden which
I cannot thoroughly understand. They say he is nephew and heir to the
Mr. Talbot whom you may have heard Papa talk of; but if so, why the
hints, the insinuations, of not being what he seems, which Clarence
perpetually throws out, and which only excite my interest without
gratifying my curiosity? 'It is not,' he has said, more than once,
'as an obscure adventurer that I will claim your love;' and if I
venture, which is very seldom (for I am a little afraid of him), to
question his meaning, he either sinks into utter silence, for which,
if I had loved according to book, and not so naturally, I should be
very angry with him, or twists his words into another signification,
such as that he would not claim me till he had become something higher
and nobler than he is now. Alas, my dear Eleanor, it takes a long
time to make an ambassador out of an attache.

See now if you reproached me justly with scanty correspondences. If I
write a line more, I must begin a new sheet, and that will be beyond
the power of a frank,--a thing which would, I know, break the heart of
your dear, good, generous, but a little too prudent aunt, and
irrevocably ruin me in her esteem. So God bless you, dearest Eleanor,
and believe me most affectionately yours, FLORA ARDENNE.

LETTER II.

FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME.