' I would have given her to you
now, and would even yet have trusted that you would have treated her
well, had it not been that Mr. Annesley has gained such a hold upon her
affections. She is wilful, as you are, and I cannot bend her. It has
been the longing of my heart that you two should live together at
Tretton. But such longings are, I think, wicked, and are seldom
realized.
"I write now just this one line to tell you that it is all settled. I
have not been strong enough to prevent such settling. He talks of three
months! But what does it matter? Three months or three years will be the
same to you, and nearly the same to me.
"Your affectionate aunt,
"SARAH MOUNTJOY.
"P.S.--May I as your loving aunt add one word of passionate entreaty?
All Tretton is yours now, and the honor of Tretton is within your
keeping. Do not go back to those wretched tables!"
Mountjoy Scarborough when he received this letter cannot be said to have
been made unhappy by it, because he had already known all his
unhappiness. But he turned it in his mind as though to think what would
now be the best course of life open to him. And he did think that he had
better go back to those tables against which his aunt had warned him,
and there remain till he had made the acres of Tretton utterly
disappear.
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