However, since my mother's return from Bath, where the compact with
Lady Aresfield was fully determined, the persecution has been fiercer.
I may have aroused suspicion by failing to act my part when she
triumphantly announced my uncle's marriage to me, or else by my
unabated resistance to the little termagant who is to be forced on me.
At any rate, I have been so intolerably watched whenever I was not on
duty, that my hours of bliss became rarer than ever. Well, sir, my
uncle charges me with indiscretion, and says my ardour aroused
unreasonable suspicions. He was constantly anxious, and would baulk
me in my happiest and most tantalising moments by making some excuse
for breaking up the evening, and then would drive me frantic by asking
whether he was to keep up my character for consistency in my absence.
However, ten days since, the twelfth of May, after three weeks'
unendurable detention in town on one pretext or another, I escaped,
and made my way to Bowstead at last. My uncle told me that he had
been obliged unwillingly to consent to our precious charge going to
meet her sister at Brentford, and that she was but newly come home.
Presently she entered, but scarcely had I accosted her before a blaze
broke out close to us. The flame caught the dry old curtains, they
flamed up like tinder, and as I leaped up on a table to tear them
down, it gave way with me, I got a blow on the head, and knew no more.
Pages:
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288