"Heaven knows!" answered Miss Burrage; "but Miss Warwick always signed her epistles Angelina, and her _unknown friend's_ were always signed Araminta. I do suspect that Araminta, whoever she is, was the instigator of this elopement."
"I wish," said Lady Frances, examining the post-mark of the letter, "I wish that we could find out where Araminta lives; we might then, perhaps, recover this poor Miss Warwick, before the affair is talked of in the world--before her reputation is injured."
"It would certainly be a most desirable thing," said Miss Burrage; "but Miss Warwick has such odd notions, that I question whether she will ever behave like other people; and, for my part, I cannot blame Lady Diana Chillingworth for giving her up. She is one of those young ladies whom it is scarcely possible to manage by common sense."
"It is certainly true," said Lady Frances, "that young women of Miss Warwick's superior abilities require something more than _common_ sense to direct them properly. Young ladies who think of nothing but dress, public amusements, and forming what they call high connexions, are undoubtedly most easily managed, by the fear of what the world will say of them; but Miss Warwick appeared to me to have higher ideas of excellence; and I therefore regret that she should be totally given up by her friends."
"It is Miss Warwick who has given up her friends," said Miss Burrage, with a mixture of embarrassment and sarcasm in her manner; "it is Miss Warwick who has given up her friends; not Miss Warwick's friends who have given up Miss Warwick."
The letter from the "amiable Araminta," which Miss Burrage left for the pervsal of Lady Frances Somerset, contained three folio sheets, of which, it is hoped, the following abridgment will be sufficiently ample to satisfy the curiosity even of those who are lovers of long letters:--