Page:Lady Anne Granard 3.pdf/36

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34
LADY ANNE GRANARD.

heart overflowing with love, had no object on which I could lavish the fraternal feeling."

"Poor little girl," cried Isabella, "how I do pity her, what a wretched child must I have been but for my sisters: oh! that I had her here, how gladly would I fold her to my heart, and call her my own, dear, dear sister!"

"Have you finished your long letter?" said Glentworth, probably hearing her voice in exclamation; "you cannot doubt my anxiety respecting a circumstance so extraordinary."

"It is indeed extraordinary, and still more affecting. The writer is your sister, my dear Glentworth."

"Sister! She will not dare to say so, be she who she may! My father I have some reason to believe forsook my mother, who unquestionably died of a broken heart. Boy as I was, I can remember enough to believe that. After some time he appeared so sorrowful that he won upon my affections; but all the time I was at Harrow he was running about on the Continent; nevertheless, he paid my bills, and supplied my wants fairly, if not liberally. He died suddenly—I never knew how; and five or six hundred pounds were all that remained to me after his estate was sold and his creditors paid. That they were paid is my consolation now; though it was difficult for