"This must be Heathcote's simple and feeling way of avowing his passion," said Janet, with a half-suppressed sigh.
"My dear girl," said Philippa, "who ever talks of simple and feeling ways of avowing a passion in these days of sophistication? and why will you persist in imagining Heathcote to be my admirer?"
"If he is not now," said Janet, "I think he can hardly fail to be."
"Do not give yourself any uneasiness on that account, Janet," answered the heiress, half in jest and half in earnest; "if you feel any preference for Heathcote, I will most cheerfully make over to you all my right and title to him. I have given away my heart in another direction, and fancy that I have gained a heart in exchange."
"Of that," said Janet, with a sad smile, "I think there can be little doubt; but who is the happy man who I conclude has been the donor of your pretty portrait?"
Janet felt no surprise when her friend mentioned the name of Captain Warrington, for she knew him to be warmly attached to Philippa; he was good-looking, good-humored, and agreeable; and although his position in society and his fortune were both inferior to Mr. Chetwode's ambitious views for his beautiful ward, Janet foresaw no difficulties in their wooing, which the perseverance and courage of Philippa, and the good sense and kindness of her guardian, would not in a short time clear away. Luncheon was now announced, and Janet felt that she should be glad when the day was at an end, the recurrence of which was one of the many ways of bringing to her mind the fact that she was considered by general consent to stand apart from others of her age and sex, and that an avowal of love was never destined to reach her eye even in the masquerade trappings of a valentine.
A few hours afterwards Janet was quietly reading in her chamber, when a letter was brought to her. In these days of cheap postage, when letters descend in a shower on most of us, and in an avalanche on many, it may seem strange to say that merely receiving a letter could be anything but a very commonplace event. Poor Janet, however, had passed her blighted youth in the strictest seclusion, and the half-dozen friends who had known her mother in the retired country place where she vegetated, wrote to her at distant intervals, and the handwriting of each of them was so familiar to her eye, that she was certain her present correspondent was not among them.