Would you--would you honestly
advise me, Flo, to go and meet him as he desires?"
"As who desires?"
"Ah, true; you do not know, of course! I am so selfishly full of myself
and my own concerns, that I seem to think every one else must be full
of them too. Forgive me, dearest, and read his sweet little letter, will
you?"
"Of whom are you speaking--to whose letter do you refer?" asks Florence,
a little sharply, in the agony of her heart.
"Florence! Whose letter would I call 'sweet' except Sir Adrian's?"
answers her cousin, with gentle reproach.
"But it is meant for you, not for me," says Miss Delmaine, holding the
letter in her hand, and glancing at it with great distaste. "He probably
intended no other eyes but yours to look upon it."
"But I must obtain advice from some one, and who so natural to expect it
from as you, my nearest relative? If, however"--putting her handkerchief
to her eyes--"you object to help me, Florence, or if it distresses you
to read--"
"Distresses me?" interrupts Florence haughtily. "Why should it distress
me? If you have no objection to my reading your--lover's--letter, why
should I hesitate about doing so? Pray sit down while I run through it."
Dora having seated herself, Florence hastily reads the false note from
beginning to end. Her heart beats furiously as she does so, and her
color comes and goes; but her voice is quite steady when she speaks
again.
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