Letter 34
I write only to bid you farewell, the spell is removed; I see you as you are. Reginald De Courcy
You know how I have loved you; you can intimately judge of my present feelings, but I am not so weak as to find indulgence in describing them to a woman who will glory in having excited their anguish, but whose affection they have never been able to gain. Reginald De Courcy
Letter 35
I am bewildered in my endeavours to form some rational conjecture of what Mrs. Manwaring can have told you to occasion so extraordinary a change in your sentiments. Lady Susan
What can you now have heard to stagger your esteem for me? Have I ever had a concealment from you? Lady Susan
If we are to part, it will at least be handsome to take your personal leave–but I have little heart to jest; in truth, I am serious enough; for to be sunk, though but for an hour, in your esteem is a humiliation to which I know not how to submit. I shall count every minute till your arrival. Lady Susan
Letter 36
Why would you write to me? Why do you require particulars? But, since it must be so, I am obliged to declare that all the accounts of your misconduct during the life, and since the death of Mr. Vernon, which had reached me, in common with the world in general, and gained my entire belief before I saw you, but which you, by the exertion of your perverted abilities, had made me resolved to disallow, have been unanswerably proved to me; nay more. Reginald De Courcy
After such a discovery as this, you will scarcely affect further wonder at my meaning in bidding you adieu. My understanding is at length restored, and teaches no less to abhor the artifices which had subdued me than to despise myself for the weakness on which their strength was founded. Reginald De Courcy
Letter 37
I am satisfied, and will trouble you (Reginald) no more when these few lines are dismissed. Lady Susan
Letter 38
I am grieved, though I cannot be astonished at your rupture with Mr. De Courcy. Mrs. Johnson
Be assured that I partake in all your feelings, and do not be angry if I say that our intercourse, even by letter, must soon be given up. Mrs. Johnson
Miss Manwaring is just come to town to be with her aunt, and they say that she declares she will have Sir James Martin before she leaves London again. If I were you, I would certainly get him myself. Mrs. Johnson
Adieu, my dearest Susan, I wish matters did not go so perversely. That unlucky visit to Langford! but I dare say you did all for the best, and there is no defying destiny. Mrs. Johnson
Letter 39
My dear Alicia,–I yield to the necessity which parts us. Under circumstances you could not act otherwise. Our friendship cannot be impaired by it. Lady Susan
I never was more at ease, or better satisfied with myself and everything about me than at the present hour. Your husband I abhor, Reginald I despise, and I am secure of never seeing either again. Lady Susan
Manwaring is more devoted to me than ever; and were we at liberty, I doubt if I could resist even matrimony offered by him. Lady Susan
Frederica shall be Sir James’s wife before she quits my house, and she may whimper, and the Vernons may storm, I regard them not. I am tired of submitting my will to the caprices of others; of resigning my own judgment in deference to those to whom I owe no duty, and for whom I feel no respect. Lady Susan
Letter 40
Reginald is returned, not to ask our consent to his marrying Lady Susan, but to tell us they are parted for ever. Lady De Courcy
This is the most joyful hour he has ever given us since the day of his birth. Lady De Courcy
Frederica runs much in my thoughts, and when Reginald has recovered his usual good spirits (as I trust he soon will) we will try to rob him of his heart once more, and I am full of hopes of seeing their hands joined at no great distance. Lady De Courcy
Letter 41
Your letter has surprized me beyond measure! Can it be true that they are really separated–and for ever? I should be overjoyed if I dared depend on it, but after all that I have seen how can one be secure? Mrs. Vernon
we had a most unexpected and unwelcome visit from Lady Susan, looking all cheerfulness and good-humour, and seeming more as if she were to marry him when she got to London than as if parted from him for ever. Mrs. Vernon
I wish we could bring dear Frederica too, but I am sorry to say that her mother’s errand hither was to fetch her away; and, miserable as it made the poor girl, it was impossible to detain her. Mrs. Vernon
The poor girl’s heart (Frederica) was almost broke at taking leave of us. I charged her to write to me very often, and to remember that if she were in any distress we should be always her friends. Mrs. Vernon
I wish there were a better prospect than now appears of the match which the conclusion of your letter declares your expectations of. At present, it is not very likely. Mrs. Vernon
Conclusion
This correspondence, by a meeting between some of the parties, and a separation between the others, could not, to the great detriment of the Post Office revenue, be continued any longer. The Narrator
she (Mrs. Vernon) was proportionably more anxious to get Frederica removed from such a mother, and placed under her own care; and, though with little hope of success, was resolved to leave nothing unattempted that might offer a chance of obtaining her sister-in-law’s consent to it. The Narrator
Persecution on the subject of Sir James was entirely at an end; his name merely mentioned to say that he was not in London; and indeed, in all her conversation, she (Lady Susan) was solicitous only for the welfare and improvement of her daughter. The Narrator
Mrs. Vernon, surprized and incredulous, knew not what to suspect, and, without any change in her own views, only feared greater difficulty in accomplishing them. The Narrator
The lucky alarm of an influenza decided what might not have been decided quite so soon. Lady Susan’s maternal fears were then too much awakened for her to think of anything but Frederica’s removal from the risk of infection; above all disorders in the world she most dreaded the influenza for her daughter’s constitution! The Narrator
Frederica returned to Churchill with her uncle and aunt; and three weeks afterwards, Lady Susan announced her being married to Sir James Martin. The Narrator
Frederica was therefore fixed in the family of her uncle and aunt till such time as Reginald De Courcy could be talked, flattered, and finessed into an affection for her which, allowing leisure for the conquest of his attachment to her mother, for his abjuring all future attachments, and detesting the sex, might be reasonably looked for in the course of a twelvemonth. The Narrator
Whether Lady Susan was or was not happy in her second choice, I do not see how it can ever be ascertained; for who would take her assurance of it on either side of the question? The Narrator
The world must judge from probabilities; she had nothing against her but her husband, and her conscience. The Narrator
Sir James may seem to have drawn a harder lot than mere folly merited; I leave him, therefore, to all the pity that anybody can give him. The Narrator
For myself, I confess that I can pity only Miss Manwaring; who, coming to town, and putting herself to an expense in clothes which impoverished her for two years, on purpose to secure him, was defrauded of her due by a woman ten years older than herself. The Narrator
© 2009 Laurel Ann Nattress, Austenprose
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