"A very pretty beginning from my son--I mean my husband's son; and yet he could not have commenced 'Dearest Mamma.'"
"'I write my first letter to you at a very painful moment. My poor father was seized on Tuesday last with a most serious and sudden illness, to which the physician as yet hesitates to give a name. It is, however, on the brain or the membranes, and deprives him of all inclination, though not entirely of all power, to use his faculties. He is, moreover, enjoined to avoid every source of excitement, and even forbidden to converse. Of course, under these afflicting circumstances, everything which relates to business in any way is imperatively excluded from his knowledge; and must continue to be so till some change occurs.
"'It is not at such a moment you would expect to hear of a marriage in the family, and yet yesterday my sister Marion was married to Lord Viscount Culduff.'"
Here she laid down the letter, and stared with an expression of almost overwhelmed amazement at her sister. "Lord Culduff! Where's the 'Peerage,' Dora? Surely it must be the same who was at Dresden when we were children; he wasn't married--there can be no son. Oh, here he is: 'Henry Plantagenet de Lacey, fourteenth Viscount Culduff; born 9th February, 17--.' Last century. Why, he 's the patriarch of the peers, and she 's twenty-four! What can the girl mean?"
"'The imperative necessity for Lord Culduff to hold himself in readiness for whatever post in the diplomatic service the Minister might desire him to occupy, was the chief reason for the marriage taking place at this conjuncture. My father, however, himself, was very anxious on the subject; and indeed, insisted strongly on being present. The ceremony was accordingly performed in his own room, and I rejoice to say that, though naturally much excited, he does not appear to have sustained any increase of malady from this trying event. I need not tell you the great disparity of age between my sister and her husband: a disparity which I own enlisted me amongst those who opposed the match. Marion, however, so firmly insisted on her right to choose for herself, and her fortune being completely at her own disposal, that all continued opposition would have been not alone unavailing for the present, but a source of coldness and estrangement for the future.