Page:Lady Anne Granard 2.pdf/130

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128
LADY ANNE GRANARD.

from suspicion of you, my good and excellent Isabella: no! it was the heat and the fever."

If it were joy to poor Georgiana to receive a letter from her sailor lover, still greater was the joy of the young wife to read so long and so kind a letter from her distant lord, one, too, so gratifying in the intelligence it conveyed; but perhaps the circumstance which struck her as best of all, was that of Mr. Glentworth having forgotten the Margaretta with which he began the letter, and resuming the Isabella by which he was wont to recognize her. She trusted it was a sign that his mind was recovering a more healthful state, that he was not obliged to refer to his imagination, and, by giving her an ideal existence, compel himself to love her as the representative of another; surely, if he could do so long without the real Margarita, and appear cheerful and happy as he used to do when in England, he might (now that death had really taken her, poor thing!) resign her entirely, and love his wife, without reference to one who, however beautiful and attached, had innocently caused him a life of sorrow, and herself a year of it, but whom she should ever remember with affection.

Here too they received letters from England of the greatest interest; dear Louisa was, like herself, a mother, and Charles, the happiest of men, wrote as he felt. Poor Georgiana had written also from Rotheles Castle, but her joy was mixed with her own sad story