Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. I AM SO GLAD?FOE HIM. Seveeal weeks have elapsed since Claire and I took leave of our respective lovers, and we have quite resumed our dear intimate sisterly relations with one another. Mr. Murray still sustains a brilliant and cultivated correspondence with me, but his letters resemble first-rate journalism more and more every week. I like them, for I in my ignorance cannot be expected to respond to them in any but the tersest way. Papa likes them too: he says he shall feel that there is a literary blank in his life, when that long-looked-for appointment is given and taken, and I have gone to share it with Mr. Murray, and the brilliant letters cease. Theo’s letters to Claire are very frequent, but they are not public property by any means. No one but Claire would miss them if they ceased. Whatever intelligence he gives her, she guards zealously, even from me. She does not even tell me whether he is doing well or ill; she only tells me that he is
working hard for her. Christmas has come, and gone; the crocuses and snowdrops, and, above all, the hounds, are out in full force. I say,
above all, the hounds, because since Sydney Dale’s return Claire and I have taken greatly to hunting under the chaperonage of Mrs. Tierney, and under the safe guidance of Sydney. These beautiful bright February days, when we four ride happily along the roads, whose hedges are blooming already with the yellow aconite and blue periwinkle, and the woods where little clumps of pure white snowdrops lift up their graceful heads to greet us, and our horses in their stride brush aside the elegant daphne laureola, will never be forgotten. They are very sweetly, purely, truly happy days. Mrs. Tierney, devoted as she is to her reckless husband and her Irish home, is very happ…