early return was a presumption which hardly anything would have seemed to justify she thanked miss but gave a decided negative her uncle she understood meant to fetch her and as her cousin s illness had continued so many weeks without her being thought at all necessary she must suppose her return would be unwelcome at present and that she should be felt an her representation of her cousin s state at this time was exactly according to her own belief of it and such as she supposed would convey to the sanguine mind of her correspondent the hope of everything she was wishing for would be forgiven for being a clergyman it seemed under certain conditions of wealth and this she suspected was all the conquest of prejudice which he was so ready to congratulate himself upon she had only learnt to think nothing of consequence but money chapter as could not doubt that her answer was conveying a real disappointment she was rather in expectation from her knowledge of miss s temper of being urged again and though no second letter arrived for the space of a week she had still the same feeling when it did come on receiving it she could instantly decide on its containing little writing and was persuaded of its having the air of a letter of haste and business its object was and two moments were enough to start the probability of its being merely to give her notice that they should be in that very day and to throw her into all the agitation of doubting what she ought to do in such a case if two moments however can surround with difficulties a third can them and before she had opened the possibility of mr and miss s having applied to her uncle and obtained his permission was giving her ease this was the letter a most scandalous ill natured has just reached me and i write dear to warn you against giving the least credit to it should it spread into the country depend upon it there is some mistake and that a day or two will clear it up � at any rate that henry is and in spite of a moment s thinks of but you say not a word of it � hear nothing nothing whisper nothing till i write again i am sure it will be all hushed up and nothing proved but s folly if they are gone i would lay my life they are only gone to park and with them but why would not you let us come for you i wish you may not repent it yours etc stood aghast as no scandalous had reached her it was impossible for her to understand much of this strange letter she could only perceive that it must relate to street and mr and only conjecture that something very had just occurred in that quarter to draw the notice of the world and to excite her jealousy in miss s apprehension if she heard it miss need not be alarmed for her she was only sorry for the parties concerned and for if the report should spread so far but she hoped it might not if the were gone themselves to as was to be inferred from what miss said it was not likely that anything unpleasant should have preceded them or at least should make any impression as to mr she hoped it might give him a knowledge of his own disposition convince him that he was not capable of being steadily attached to any one woman in the world and shame him from any longer in addressing herself it was very strange i she had begun to think he really loved her and to fancy his affection for her something more than common and his park ter still said that lie cared for nobody else yet there must have been some marked display of attentions to her cousin there must have been some strong since her correspondent was not of a sort to regard a slight one very uncomfortable she was and must continue till she heard from miss again it was impossible to banish the letter from her thoughts and she could not relieve herself by speaking of it to any human being miss need not have urged secrecy with so much warmth she might have trusted to her sense of what was due to her cousin the next day came and brought no second letter was disappointed she could still think of little else all the morning but when her father came back in the afternoon with the daily newspaper as usual she was so far from expecting any through such a channel that the subject was for a moment out of her head she was deep in other musing the remembrance of her first evening in that room of her father and his newspaper came across her no candle was now wanted the sun was yet an hour and a half above the horizon she felt that she had indeed been three months there and the sun s rays falling strongly into the parlor instead of cheering made her still more melancholy for sunshine appeared to her a totally different thing in a town and in the country here its power was only a glare � a stifling sickly glare serving but to bring forward and dirt that might otherwise have slept there was neither nor in sunshine in a town she sat in a blaze of oppressive heat in a cloud of moving dust and her eyes could only wander from the walls marked by her father s head to the table cut and by her brothers where stood the tea board never thoroughly cleaned the cups and wiped in streaks the milk a mixture of floating in thin blue and the bread and butter growing every minute more greasy than even s hands had first produced it 