CHAPTER III.
"Two springs I saw."—Moore.
"Good night—how can such night be good?"—Shelley.
"Night, oh, not night: where are its comrades twain—silence and sleep?"—L. E. L.
Snow-dropped, crocused, and violeted Spring, in the country, was beginning to consider about making her will, and leaving her legacies of full-blown flowers and green fruit to Summer, when a letter from town arrived, franked by Montague Delawarr, M.P., saying, that as the spring was now commencing in town, perhaps Miss Arundel would remember a hope she once gave, and comply with the request contained in the note which the said Mr. Delawarr had the honour of enclosing.
The note expressed the usual number of fears, honours, and pleasures, which usually accompany invitations; was written in a hand of even more than usually elegant unintelligible expansiveness; was on pale sea-green paper,
