plumage against her wet cheek, and a touch of a common natural object is a great boon sometimes.
The exultation, the triumph, the delirium of pride and joy were all for George Ashe, when he arrived at last, and was gravely, almost diffidently, informed of the Aladdin’s lamp that had been handed in at his door. It was not that George was mercenary, but he had all the vehement impulses which were calm in Letty. There was no end to his brilliant dreams. The poor Colonel’s bank-notes and bonds might have had the lustre of Aladdin’s charmed stones, the hard, glittering fruit of his unnatural, artificial trees; Bayswater might have been Paradise, considering how the simple fellow, with his poetic imagination, brought to bear on his prosaic luck, plans regarding them. It took all the influence of Letty’s controlling power to restrain him. She was not without fear at his fever, though it was not in her nature to show her fear. She was a woman who could be modestly silent alike in trepidation and mortification, in pain of body and anguish of mind.
“If I were you, George, I would go to the factory as usual,” proposed Letty, earnestly. “People will not believe at first in our fortune; I can scarcely believe in it myself. There may be some obstacle yet of which we are not aware, though the lawyer speaks fair. It is silly to care too much for our neighbours’ opinions, but I should not like them to say that we were lifted clean off our feet before we were sure of a higher perch, too,” added Letty, with a faint smile, stroking her turtle.
This young woman had a wholesome regard for public opinion, and a tolerable aversion to ridicule. George Ashe had sufficient discretion to enable him to see the merit of Letty’s counsel. He compelled himself to attend the factory and keep accounts, while he was exchanging momentous letters with the London lawyer, until Letty herself observed that the effort was so painful, and the oversights and blunders he committed so flagrant and absurd, that she herself freed him from the obligation before he was dismissed in disgust by his employers. Then he wandered about aimlessly, could not resist taking all sorts of people into his confidence, until the rumour spread to circles which had never heard of this humble young couple; then he built castles in the air and pulled them down again, overturned all their old domestic arrangements, and neglected their household rules, until Letty learnt by experience that the early days of moneyed consequence are desultory and disagreeable.
But the correspondence with the lawyer was very plain sailing.
Colonel Annesley’s will was undoubtedly formal and legal—not a question but the old soldier had died in his sound mind, and no opposition would be made by his cousins, whatever their private feelings. Mr. and Mrs. Ashe, whose most obedient servant the lawyer was, literally and figuratively had only to go up to London and take possession.
Letty drew a long breath; her husband was not ruined by a false expectation; now she might honestly accept the congratulations poured upon her by a crowd of strangers, suddenly and not insincerely grown friendly. Their hearts were warmed by the liberality of fortune to the Ashes: who knew but his and her turn might come next? Now Letty might make use of that letter of credit at the banker’s, the responsibility of whose possession had impressed her so seriously; and Letty went out and was as foolish as any other dear woman, committed the enormity of buying a ten-pound shawl for herself and a flowing dressing-gown for George Ashe. Letty had a fancy for expensive shawls, and an innocent, ancient ambition to see George in a flowing dressing-gown; she had dreamt many a quaint dream of him in her working days, attired in the slippered ease and old-fashioned majestic gown and student’s cap in the portraits of the poets, whose works he picked up at book-stalls, before she had the least acquaintance with these great men and their worries and troubles.
That shawl and that dressing-gown happened to be nearly the sole luxuries of her fortune on which Letty put her hands.
The zealous lawyer pressed on Mr. and Mrs. Ashe to come up to town and satisfy themselves with regard to their legacy; he even hinted at their immediately occupying the house at Bayswater, and seeing something of the season. Letty recoiled in horror from this extravagance, considering their late position; but when she urged fresh delay and consideration, woman-like, exaggerating her caution till it verged on cowardice, George Ashe proposed to go up to town alone, and receive and invest their funds. Letty objected hastily and strongly to this solitary expedition, and instanced that, with a very little more time and trouble, she could accompany him. It would not do. George was affronted, restive, unmanageable, and he was quite ready to throw out hints that Letty was looking upon herself as an heiress, was wishing to act upon her heiress-ship, to establish her independence of him, or at least to imply his subordination to her.
Letty was really wounded. It was the first unjust, ungenerous treatment she had experienced from George Ashe. The fact was, he was rapidly getting captious and overbearing. It was as if the golden mist of his imagination was converted into clouds of dim smoke, blinding and confounding him. He was a fine fellow, but he could not stand his sudden rise in the world; his temper and principles were tottering under it.
Letty settled with herself that it was better George Ashe should go up to London alone. There was delicacy in this, and there was a little stubbornness. Any way it was the first parting between those who had been made one flesh; and it had not been without previous roots of bitterness and seeds of disunion. You may feel for poor Letty, with her womanly sentiments all the more swelling in her throat and tightening her breast, because it was a strong heart which gave them birth.
Letty knew what loneliness was after she had succeeded to her fortune, and was left alone in the manufacturing town. Her husband was up in that London, whose vastness and unebbing tide of humanity oppressed her even to think of. The