

### Letters from Bath; Or, a Friend in Exile

### By

### Meredith Allady

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2012 Meredith Allady

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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To A, B, D, H & M--you know who you are.

(And no, plumbago is _not_ a type of pudding.)

### Selected Letters from Miss Ann Northcott to Miss Julia Parry

Bath, England, 1804
Chapter One

Letter No. 1

Tuesday, 8th May

My dearest Julia,

I have only a moment before my dread captor returns—already I can hear that familiar voice approaching, the footfalls descending the creaking stairs, advancing toward the room in which I am being kept to await whatever black tortures may have been devised by those who brought me here against my will. They must have underestimated my ingenuity, else they would never have dared place me in this room with the means of telling my sad tale so close to hand—perhaps they had forgotten that the neglected writing desk (elegantly fashioned after the style of Louis XIV) even contained these few scraps of paper, and an old half-dried inkwell (which I have managed to moisten with my tears). But I must waste no more time, uncertain, as I am, how many minutes—breathless with alarm—or even seconds—filled with the rapid beating of my heart—I may have before those ominous steps halt outside the door, the knob turns within the grasp of my abductor's hand, and the heavy panel swings open to reveal the stern lines of that most terrifying visage—

But no, it was only Nell, come to advise me that a Mrs. Thingumbob has called unexpectedly, and since my mother would not, therefore, be able to go out as soon as she had intended, I might return to the garden if I so wished.

I find that I do not wish, however, for the garden had begun to feel a trifle cool, even with a shawl—though it did not suit me to admit this earlier, when I was summoned—and this is really very lovely paper I have found, of a pleasing creaminess that begs to have confidences and complaints scribbled onto it. No doubt my mother uses it only for the most exalted missives—advice to Bishops, replies to duchesses—in which case it is most appropriate that I should purloin a sheet or two in order to send you an account of my Cruel Circumstances, my Numerous Travails since the day I was Ruthlessly Torn from the Embrace of my Most Affectionate Friend, and borne away to this benighted spot, this blight upon England, this horridly Parry-less city of Bath.

To begin with, the journey was quite dreadfully tedious and uncomfortable. Ten hours—or twenty—it matters not; after thirty minutes, the seats might have been fashioned from brickbats for all the ease they offered my poor rattled bones, and since I had nothing to say to my mother, nor she to me, and she had chosen to send all the house-servants ahead on the stagecoach, I had perforce to take up my book—and almost immediately begin to regret the impulse that had led me to select de Retz as my sole companion for the journey. Yes, yes, I recall with bitter clarity that I insisted on choosing the _Memoirs_ precisely because I knew there was little chance that I would ever pursue them if I had anything else to engage my attention, and I was quite right: if I could have found even a few pages of Mr. Hill's 'gentle strictures' against Mr. Wesley, abandoned and crumpled in some crevice of the carriage, I would joyfully have smoothed them out and read every denunciatory passage thrice over, before I would ever have voluntarily returned to the scheming Cardinal. Thus, our journey: my mother, elegant and composed, intent upon Lord Chesterfield's Letters; myself wriggling about in futile variations of Weary Passenger, determinedly keeping my attention fixed upon paragraph after paragraph of tiresome French politics. Our stops were too few, and too infrequent: the relief of walking about; the disappointment of discovering that we were not to stay longer than it took the horses to be changed; that food was to be made ready to send with us; the awful realization that the squabs had grown even more unyielding in our brief absence...

But I will spare you more. It is too late to halve my misery by sharing it, and why should you suffer needlessly? Eventually, Bath was attained, Gay-street traversed, and I staggered up the steps and into my prison—and yet another flight of steps became necessary—and then—and then my cell—a lonely pallet met my eyes, and then I felt myself falling forward onto a pale green counterpane, with fat and unforgiving pillows standing in stern array above my head, and Nell's voice reaching me, faintly, as if from a great distance: "For pity's sake, Miss Ann, at least let me take your shoes off first!"

Your most affct. Friend,

Ann Northcott

PS. Although this letter is directed to you, I have no objection if the rest of your family wishes to share in my wretchedness as well, though perhaps it might be best if you read to them only select portions, so that Kitty might be spared the more affecting details. When I have somewhat recovered, I mean to begin enclosing separate pages to them, describing my days here, and of course these will be of a far more erudite and edifying nature, than those I direct to you alone. To you, I reserve the right to complain as much as I wish:

"Take, then, my friend, my words of truth,

While you at home do spend your youth,

Enclosed within that blessed sphere,

Domestic comforts all quite near,

Not sent, by parent's harsh decree,

To share the woes of Bath with me.

[Editor's Note: This is clearly based upon lines from Christopher Anstey's _The New Bath Guide_

"Take, then, my friend, the sprightly rhyme,

While you inglorious waste your prime,

At home in cruel durance pent

On dull domestic cares intent,

Forbid, by parent's harsh decree,

To share the joys of Bath with me."]

Chapter Two

Letter No. 2

Friday, 11th May

My dear Julia,

I believe I may have abandoned my previous letter rather abruptly, leaving in your head a vision of myself, face down upon the bed. Please remove me from this undignified position at once—Nell soon scolded me out of it, in any event—and assume that I dined like a civilized person on a bit of bread and butter, and that a night's sleep saw me as recovered from the rigors of our journey, as I judged prudent. I might, indeed, have been more fully restored to strength, save that my mother was determined to waste no time, but almost at once announced that we must bestir ourselves to visit a truly Gargantuan list of shops. My suggestion that perhaps I would not need to accompany her, since I had already so many new garments but recently finished by Mrs. Anderson, met with what I can only describe as a most withering stare. It seems that dresses that are deemed perfectly acceptable for Warwickshire neighbors, and approved for catching the eye of your good-natured cousin (who, after all, cares so little for the arbitrary decrees of fashion, that he could not even be bothered to purchase a commission in a regiment that would clothe him in scarlet), would not do at all for Bath, with its balls and concerts, and its wealth of well-born idlers and invalids. Off we went, therefore, to immerse ourselves in silks and muslins, gloves and fans and buckles and ribbons; straw hats adorned with highly-colored fruits and flowers; self-important dress-makers with decisive but respectful opinions and exhausted minions staggering under the weight of pattern-books; a shoe-maker who was strangely astonished, and not a little disappointed, to find that my mother desired him to make for us several pairs of shoes, rather than to pay him to instruct us in how to do so ourselves: a most peculiar bit of whimsy, which has apparently begun to gain popularity in certain quarters.

What quarters? you may be asking yourself, having never heard of such a thing, safely sheltered in your bucolic paradise as you have been. As someone who has now had the benefit of living for almost three days in a proper city, I am now qualified to reply, "Why, those quarters where people have a good deal of money, and a good deal of time, and nothing better to do with it than to sit around struggling with stubborn leather and coarse thread, being patiently instructed by a most respectful master cobbler, who is no doubt taking great pleasure in the thought of being paid twice—once for his hours of instruction, and then again, the following week, for making a decent pair of shoes, after those wrought by his high-born pupils prove too uncomfortable to be worn for longer than it takes to flaunt them before the astonished eyes of their friends."

Dutifully following my mother up and down Milsom Street, I could not help but be reminded of a general who has just learned he is to be facing Boney himself upon the battlefield, scurrying about making what preparations he can, all the time fearing they will prove inadequate in the face of the many disadvantages heaped upon him by nature. In the general's case, his chief disadvantage is undoubtedly the fact that he is not Bonaparte; my mother's, that I am her daughter; or rather, that her daughter is I, and not another. I have only to look down at my sadly unremarkable hand (a smaller version of my father's) as it guides the pen across the page, or glance across the room at the glass on the wall and confirm that this morning's careful curls have wilted to an alarming degree, to know that in her eyes I must seem almost expressly fashioned to disappoint her every maternal hope; even if she had not scrupulously informed me of it at choice intervals over the past ten years.

Alas, that in her zeal, my mother should have over-estimated the strength of her troops: after two days of such furious activity, my condition is far worse than it was even directly after our arrival, and she has been forced to accede to my desire to spend today, at least, comfortably ensconced on a sofa, and with no further call upon my strength, than is necessitated by dipping a pen, or holding open a book.

Monday evening, if I am judged fit, it is her intention to lead me forth to my first Bath assembly, if a suitable dress should have been delivered by then. Given my uselessness in such a setting, I cannot help but wonder what sort of Eligible Peer she imagines will be drawn to a young lady who spends the entire evening sitting on a bench, waiting impatiently for the moment when she might go in to tea (my mother assures me that a splendid tea is included in the subscription).

It has occurred to me, that my mother's plans might have a greater chance of success, if she would simply allow me to write out an advertisement beforehand, so that I might hold it before me as I sat; and if that did not serve, perhaps I could 'accidentally' let it fall into the path of any especially promising candidates who passed before me. I think I could contrive quite a creditable notice: "Required for the purposes of matrimony, a titled gentleman of no particular talent or intelligence; personal fortune is negotiable, though at least a modest allowance is necessary in order to support an appearance of respectability. Dukes, marquesses, earls, viscounts and barons preferred, though baronets accepted if nothing better is on offer. Must be prepared to wed countrified heiress of 18 years, possessed of few social graces, a disagreeable disposition when crossed, and no more than moderately attractive appearance, even when curl-papers are employed. Heiress is worth in excess of £8,000, but prospective suitors should be warned that she has not wit enough to know what is good for her, and has repeatedly declined to cast her line before neighboring lords when it was her manifest duty to do so, and banishment was threatened as a consequence of disobedience. If interested, please inquire at _____, or arrange to be introduced to Mrs. Northcott in the nearest card-room, at your own convenience. Caveat Emptor: said heiress has also a slight limp due to a fall in her youth, but as this defect in no way compromises her fortune, any gentleman of intelligence will realize the advantages to be found in a wife who cannot dance, and thus has little need of expensive ball gowns, as well as decreased opportunities for flirtation.'

Yours, in the guise of merchandise, Ann Northcott

Chapter Three

Letter No. 4

[Editor's note: Those letters which contained mostly irrelevant material, such as comments on Julia's own letters, descriptions of balls and concerts, and criticisms of various books, are not included in this collection.]

Tuesday, 15th May

My Dear Julia,

In my last letter you may have discerned a certain contentment seeping into my prose, brought on by several days of being left to do as I pleased, while my mother busied herself with morning calls and visiting the assembly rooms. Unfortunately, one of the ball-dresses my mother had commissioned was indeed completed in time, and so she carried out her threat, and curled and pinned and laced and gloved, out we sallied last evening.

Julia, I have not the proper words to describe the impression it made upon me, when first we entered. If this is how it looks now, while Members of Parliament are still vigorously arguing with one another, I cannot conceive of how anyone is able to move more than an inch or two in any direction, once London has shaken itself free of hundreds of hot and disgruntled aristocrats, many of whom reportedly have nothing better to do than rush here to divert themselves with Bath's well-regulated amusements. In the ordinary way, as you know, my mother would have no thought of lingering here for the summer months, risking the dilution of her own consequence by the influx of so many persons of importance; but I very much fear, that for the joy of seeing me 'credibly established', she means to endure even this humiliation.

But this is only a dread specter of the future. Presently, her _amour propre_ is perfectly secure within her own circle of admirers, which is wide enough, that she need never enter a room, without having someone ready to receive her stately nod of acknowledgement with every symptom of gratification. There are, in particular, four or five ladies of mature if not excessive years, who seem to form what I cannot help but think of as her Court: a Mrs. Warren, Mrs. Belmar, Mrs. Farris, Mrs. Joles, and a Mrs. Ash-something-or-other. The first two are widows, and though the last three admit to husbands, I can only suppose that they are molded from the same obliging material as my father, and give little trouble to their wives, who return the favor by seldom referring to them even in conversation.

As for these court ladies, I have, as yet, been unable to determine the precise origin of their attachment to my mother's interests, since it may have been inspired by her husband's illustrious (if lamentably long-lived) relatives, her own highly-respectable forbears, or even the elegance of her hands and the practiced haughtiness of her demeanor. One thing is certain, and that is, that she failed to warn them of my Fatal Flaw: their first expressions of delight at being introduced to the Princess Royal of the House of Northcott faltered and fell away with almost audible thumps, as they perceived the sad truth of my affliction. My mother gracefully sought to ease their consternation, by dismissing my infirmity as the residue of a trifling fall suffered at some unspecified, but fairly recent, date; but she was shortly afterward summoned away by the siren call of the card-room, and left to the kindly words and sympathetic glances of her ladies-in-waiting, I was soon confiding in them, as my mother's most trusted friends, a more complete account of my frailty and decrepitude. The confession that I could no longer dance, appeared to strike them all with something akin to horror, and even brought tears to the eyes of Mrs. Warren; my brave protestations that I had never any great enjoyment in the pastime even before, was received with sighs, and mournful head-shakings, and, as far as I could tell, comprehensive disbelief.

Mrs. Warren was the first to pull herself from the slough of despond into which a contemplation of a danceless Miss Northcott had cast her, and, clutching onto the hope of a cure, she began to urge upon me the virtues of the baths. This was a discussion into which the other ladies eagerly joined, and in very short order they had convinced themselves that a course of Medicinal Bathing could not help but prove beneficial to my general health and well-being, even if there had never before been a recorded instance of the waters miraculously restoring anyone's ability to perform a cotillion—and they did not seem to rule even this out entirely. I listened patiently to their descriptions of the transports of those who rose from the waters, wonderfully invigorated, their pains eased, their indigestion cured, their fingertips wrinkled—all, in short, infused with a new zest for life, a renewed ardor for playing cards and drinking tea and flirting and reading novels and gazing at the portraits of the All-Glorious Nash (these, I collect, being almost inescapable), and whatever other worthy activities may form the framework of Bath lives. I promised to try the baths at the first opportunity, and was eventually able to turn the conversation to other matters, of more interest to myself.

I passed the whole of the evening in their company—not all together, of course, but they never left me alone without at least two of them in attendance—and I cannot say too much in praise of their thoughtfulness, and the assiduity with which they remembered and respected my tragic weaknesses on all occasions.

In the ordinary way of things, as you know, such solicitude would not suit me at all; would, in fact, soon provoke me to conceal myself behind pillars and small decorative trees and ponderous strangers with wide silhouettes, whenever I saw one of them approaching. However, finding myself exiled to Bath is not an ordinary circumstance: it is almost a declaration of war; and one thing I learned from De Retz, is that there is a distinct art, to transforming adverse circumstances into one's good fortune. These relentlessly sympathetic ladies might have sworn allegiance to my mother, but I mean to turn them into my own staunchest allies. I can only pray that they will prove themselves to be more steadfast than Russians, and more effectual than Austrians.

Yours, as full of intrigue as any French ecclesiastic,

Ann Northcott

PS. In considering the care with which my mother chooses her companions, I am reminded of the deer in your grandfather's park. They, too, have sense enough to know that they are better protected if they stay within certain boundaries, and so make no attempt to jump over ha-has and walls, and experience the true freedom of roaming wherever they will, and perhaps being summarily shot in mid-frolic by some rude gypsy thinking only of his dinner.

Chapter Four

Letter No. 6

Saturday, 19th May

My dear Julia,

Yesterday, worn down by the persistent recommendations of my kindly allies, I at last agreed to give myself over into the hands of the bathing attendants. Let me say at once, that I have nothing against the baths themselves. If I had come upon them in the midst of a discreet copse somewhere, at either Hellwick or Merriweather, I would, like Bladud and his leprous swine, think them a most desirable addition to the property, and would not hesitate to repair to them with regularity; no, it is not the baths, but their accoutrements—the ungainly dress, the awkwardness of ascending and descending, even with assistance—and the attendants themselves, who despite their solemn countenances, must surely be forced to retire hastily on occasion, in order not to break forth into unseemly gusts of mirth at the spectacle presented by some of their floundering charges.

When I eventually emerged, and was once more clothed and in my right mind, I decided that I would have had to sustain far greater evidences of the bath's benefits—on the order of the healing of the Paralytic at the Pool of Bethesda—before I would again consent to subject myself to an indignity of that magnitude.

Consequently, when next the beneficial properties of the baths were urged upon my by some of my allies, I made haste to turn the conversation, by asking if any of them knew the identity of the pretty dark-haired young lady, who had just entered the room in company with two older females, the shorter of whom wore a turban that even your intrepid Great-Aunt Thomasin would have hesitated to place upon her head. By the time all eyes and quizzing glasses had discovered the trio in question (a thing easily accomplished, once I mentioned the astonishing headpiece), my putative immersions had been entirely forgotten, as they hastened to tell me all they knew about the brunet and her two companions. It was not very much—nor very interesting. The turban-wearer was a well-known figure in the public rooms, a Mrs. Smithton, twice-widowed, suspected of possessing considerable wealth—a suspicion which could not, however, be proved either by the appearance of her household, or the frequency with which she complained about the price of the various subscriptions. She was devoted to card games of every description, though (according to Mrs. Farris, who would know) she seemed to derive no satisfaction from the pastime, as her manner when thus engaged was singularly grim and resolute, and her games frequently ended in quarrels and insults, if her fellow-players won too often against her. Of her companions, a Mrs. Barr and her daughter, less was known, for they had begun to accompany Mrs. Smithton to the Rooms but a few weeks before, and she had only vouchsafed the information that they were "distant relatives, left on my hands." Mrs. Barr's sober dress and situation hinted at widowhood, but beyond this deduction little intelligence had been gleaned, for she was almost always to be found seated with her benefactress at a card table, and spoke of little save tricks and trumps; while the only thing known of Miss Barr, was that she was fond of reading, as she did nothing but sit in corners, with a small volume in her hand which at times resembled a prayer book. This circumstance, combined with the fact that her dresses were observed to be unnaturally free of superfluous embellishment, for a time brought about a rumor that the Barr ladies were Methodists; until more sensible voices pointed out that a mother so concerned with the purity of her daughter's conscience as to forbid the use of colored ribbons, was unlikely to spend her own days playing cards.

I do not know why I waste my ink upon names, for I am sure all this engages your attention even less than it did my own, and I had at least the advantage of looking at color plates of the characters, as it were—and of having chosen to learn about them in the first place, for the simple reason that I had noticed them on a previous occasion, and had at that time decided that the daughter was the handsomest young lady I had yet seen in Bath. I had likewise, you may be sure, selected the most good-looking gentleman, but he was not present at the time when I most required a distraction for my allies, and in any event I would not have been foolish enough to indicate to them that I had even the slightest hint of interest in a specific young man, even if it was only a very mild and indifferent sort of appreciation, which is the only kind that is left to anyone who has grown up in the vicinity of your brother's face. And the countenance of the gentleman in question made no pretense of rivaling Clive, being merely a good English face, symmetrical enough to be pleasing, and the features bold enough to be considered good-looking on a man, while gaining for a woman such compliments as '....but very sweet-natured, poor thing.'

As you can see, though I may be banished here, with nothing to do but be an idle, poke-nosed busy-body, I intend to be the very best busy-body I can be.

Yours, uncured and probably incorrigible, Ann

PS. Pray be sure and repeat to Clive what I said about the inferior appearance of the gentlemen to be found here, in contrast to himself, as I know he will be outraged by such a favorable allusion to his appearance. It is one of the additional sorrows of my exile, the knowledge that your brother is being forced to spend so many weeks without someone present to tease him properly. I know that on occasion you try, but you are hampered by the fact that you are unsuited by temperament to find him as irritating as I do; and of course Kitty is absolutely hopeless, as I have never seen her display anything but utter adoration for either one of you. If Clive is not completely spoilt and unmanageable by the time I return, I shall confess myself very surprised.

Chapter Five

Letter No. 9

Thursday, 24th May

Dear Julia,

I look upon it as the most Providential thing, that I spent so many lines in one of my letters last week telling you the details of how I waste my time here, for today I have an incident to relate, which you could not properly appreciate without that silly prologue.

This morning, perhaps an hour after my mother and I arrived at the pump-room, paid our respects to the memorial of The Venerable Nash and went our separate ways, I was sitting with the most devoted of my allies, and trying to persuade her that as little as I needed to submerge myself in medicinal waters, did I need to swallow them. Having been curious enough to accept a glass the very first day, I remain quite convinced that that single dose concentrated within it all the restorative 'chemical agents' I am likely to require for the rest of my natural life. My ladies, unfortunately, are just as firmly convinced that in order for the waters to attain their greatest efficacy within the human body, they must be imbibed daily. A polite conflict routinely arises on this subject, particularly between myself and the faithful Mrs. Warren, and today she had just declared her benevolent determination to fetch me a glass from the pump with her own two hands, and was struggling to her gouty feet despite my continued protests, when a certain passing gentleman, having overheard Mrs. Warren's declaration (which would not have been difficult; she is very far, alas, from possessing that excellent thing, a voice that is ever soft, gentle and low), paused in his progress, and courteously—or officiously, depending upon one's perception—offered to perform the task for her. Mrs. Warren, being of a mind to see only the courtesy, accepted with the smiles and flutters more suited to a young girl just come out, and sped him on his way with strident volleys of gratitude.

In the brief lapse of time during which Mrs. Warren's knight was absent on his quest, she recovered her composure enough to recall that she had been introduced to his aunt a fortnight ago, and though he had not been present on the occasion, she had afterward seen them together, and deduced his identity from what his aunt had said of him. His aunt—whose name she could not recall—was suffering from a bilious complaint, that had resisted all the various efforts of her physician for close on two years; she had come to try the Baths at her nephew's insistence, though she held out little hope that they would prove efficacious. Her husband, who had but recently departed this life, had likewise urged the visit upon her, but she had not cared to leave him for so long, when his own condition would not permit him to accompany her. Mrs. Warren had not spoken to her since that day, but as the obliging and insistent nephew approached with his obnoxious burden, my companion was strangely overcome by a desire to know all about his aunt's present condition. I felt little pity for him, for gentlemen who go about offering to fetch unnecessary items for elderly ladies in Bath must know very well that there can be no other reward for their services than a multitude of questions.

Introductions were made as I received the glass with an insincere murmur of thanks, and if he realized the immense privilege bestowed upon him by being allowed to serve as butler to " _Mrs. Northcott's_ daughter" he concealed it admirably. As for me, I was merely relieved to find that his name did not hideously contradict his appearance—Grayson is a very respectable name; I must have objected if he had revealed himself to be a Doodle or a Bunbutter. As for that appearance itself, my admiration for it did not appreciably diminish due to this closer inspection, as such admiration too often does, though I was a little surprised to find him somewhat older than my original estimate; the difference in perspective between one yard and ten revealing that he was certainly past his thirtieth year, and that the momentous anniversary was probably even lost from sight around the bend.

Not that this signified; in fact, it rather increased my admiration, for how few gentleman, who may be considered good-looking in the first flush of youth, manage to retain anything but a 'pleasant appearance' beyond it? To do so, I am convinced, one must possess the proper sort of bones to support one's features; it is the physical manifestation of a theological truth, that a house built upon sand will not endure once the storm of time passes over it. I estimated that Mr. Grayson's house was built upon a sturdy enough foundation, that he need not worry about significant quantities of erosion for perhaps a score of years. I had plenty of time to form this favorable judgment, since after Mrs. Warren verbally herded him into taking a seat, she set herself to extract from him a potted history of his life. This he surrendered with the good-natured ease of a man well-used to offering inconsequential personal scraps on the altar of feminine curiosity, while somehow persuading the officiating priestess that he has sacrificed the entire ox. (Forgive the sanguinary nature of the image, but I could not resist it when it came to me in a burst of creative genius.)

At the end of perhaps twenty minutes, Mrs. Warren was thoroughly satisfied to have discovered that a) he was single; b) he had been for some years a fellow at Cambridge; and c) his aunt had just yesterday admitted for the first time that she thought the waters were ameliorating her condition. This last subject he was perfectly willing to expound upon, and patiently engaged Mrs. Warren in a rather horrifying discussion of various points raised in Sir George Somebody-or-other's Treatise on Bath Waters (which inspired me with a strong desire not even to touch the glass which held mine, let alone drink its contents), and listened attentively to several of her favorite stories of those who had been converted to the praise of Bath waters, even after being disillusioned by those supposedly possessing 'a greater quantity of virtuous minerals.' He eventually made his escape after pronouncing his conviction that his aunt would be very much flattered if Mrs. Warren chose to seek her out, and bestow upon her the wisdom of her greater experience.

This short interview left my companion so in charity with Mr. Grayson, that she could only satisfy her esteem for him by employing the next half-hour in repeating to me everything that he had told her, interlarded with various descriptive adjectives—"so kind!" "truly amiable!"—just as if I had not been sitting beside them for the entirety of the conversation. Indeed, so enraptured was she with his amiable qualities, that she soon persuaded herself that so worthy a gentleman could not possibly have nothing but a fellowship to recommend him, and spent another fifteen minutes explaining how the superior cut and cloth of his garments marked him for a man of both means and taste, beyond that which could be expected of even a duly elected fellow.

At first, I was a little puzzled as to why she should be so determined to lift him out of his scholarly domain (is there a University rule, I wondered, that posits the wearing of ill-fitting coats?), but gradually my darkness gave way to light, and I realized that her lecture upon coats and coat-makers was designed to inspire me to look favorably upon the gentleman as a Prospective Match. Since a few seconds' thought was sufficient for me to dismiss any suspicion that her efforts had been prompted by instructions from my mother—she would never have looked favorably upon a mere tutor, however grand his sphere of instruction, nor desired me to do so—I quickly forgave Mrs. Warren her readiness to assign my hand to a gentleman perhaps twice my age, and began attending to her with a countenance designed to reflect a certain wistful melancholy. When she allowed me to do so, I delicately reminded her that a young lady as Sorely Afflicted as I was, was unlikely to be considered a suitable match by any reasonably healthy gentleman. I mentioned the difficulty of stairs—I feel sure that most rooms at an ancient University can only be attained by a great many of them, and all of them narrow—and the fatigue involved in hosting dinners—surely such men dine together frequently, in order to complain about the undergraduates, and discuss who must next be rusticated—and anything else I could think of that might cast a discouraging light on her benevolent plans. Having firmly established myself once again in her mind as A Pitiable Creature, I turned the conversation to a more cheerful contemplation of Mrs. Farris's recent poor luck with cards, and over the course of the next hour managed, by incremental degrees, to lower my unconsumed glass of selenite-and-chalybeate-impregnated-waters behind the leg of my chair, where it was happily forgotten as we moved down the room to join those shocking late-comers, Mrs. Belmar and Mrs. Ashford.

Yours affctly, Ann Northcott

PS. It will not surprise you to know, that my mother, though in another room at the time, in some occult fashion, became aware of the meeting between her only daughter and an eligible bachelor of whatever age, and later quizzed me thoroughly on the subject. After hearing of the facts gleaned by Mrs. Warren's inquisition, she was pleased to enforce my natural indifference by her opinion that at least I had 'sense enough not to form foolish romantic fancies about a man who had wasted his youth teaching other men's heirs.' This inspired me to contemplate the pleasures to be found in disappointing her expectations—she had not, after all, actually forbade me to form an attachment to him—but you will be relieved to know that I abandoned the notion after no more than a few minutes.

In any event, it is doubtful if he would have obliged me with even the most trifling flirtation, since, according to my mother, a man must step down from his fellowship if he takes a wife; a circumstance of which Mrs. Warren was clearly in ignorance. Or perhaps not, since she was so desirous of divorcing his income from his college, and proving his coat the product of at least a comfortable independence.

Chapter Six

Letter No. 11

Monday, 28th May

My dear Lady Julia,

Are you surprised to find yourself endowed with a title? You will be no less surprised to discover the identity of the one who bestowed it upon you—no less a person than the pretty dark-haired daughter of the card-playing Methodist, whom I mentioned in one of my earlier letters. But I suppose you will tell me I should not joke about that; and, indeed, they are not truly Methodists, despite Miss Barr's hesitant confession that they had once gone to the Argyle Chapel, until Mrs. Smithton discovered and forbade such scandalous behavior, remaining adamant even in the face of Mrs. More's known approval of the place. It seems Mrs. Smithton has no opinion of Mrs. More, _or_ her books.

And now that I have drawn the teeth from your nascent scold, let me return to the main point of this epistle, which is, that I have now made the acquaintance of the two handsomest people to be found in Bath—at least, they are so by my reckoning—and if the first meeting was unintentional, the second was all my own contrivance. (It is indeed a fearful thing, to fall into the hands of a bored Ann Northcott.)

Enlisting Mrs. Farris to my cause—for she alone of all my allies had spoken to Mrs. Barr—I arranged for us to hobble slowly past where the daughter was seated, at which point my shawl, which I had carelessly allowed to slip down my arms, fell away altogether and sank down to land a little distance from her toes. For a few seconds, as we continued past, I feared that she was too engrossed in the pages of her book for my stratagem to have succeeded, and just as I was prepared to discover the shawl's absence myself, a light touch upon my arm and a diffident voice brought the loss to my attention. From there, everything proceeded as I had planned, for Mrs. Farris, innocently turning about, of course saw the necessity of introducing me to one who had already earned my gratitude. A few questions and replies later, and Miss Barr had returned to her chair, while I, recalcitrant shawl firmly in place, had taken my seat beside her, and Mrs. Farris, relieved of her role as Miss Northcott's walking stick, had eagerly scurried off to find a vacant seat at a card-table.

It did not take long to establish that my new acquaintance suffered from a Kitty-like degree of shyness, which would have made conversing an excessively difficult exercise, were it not for the presence of the book in her hand. She was a trifle ashamed, I think, to be forced to admit that it was the first volume of a novel— _Emmeline_ —but this was all the better for my purposes, since we cannot all excel in the art of polite conversation, but almost everyone is capable of eloquence in abusing something they particularly dislike. I had only to acknowledge to her that I was myself a disciple of Lydia Languish, and request from her the name of the worst novel she had ever read, and that was the end of almost all awkwardness between us. Once she had finished explaining to me her reasons for her utter loathing of _Nature and Art_ , and I had exclaimed, and laughed, and agreed with her on several points, her anxiety had abated enough that she was able to remember that she could easily keep the conversation afloat by returning the question to me, and from thence we proceeded apace. Having begun with Worst Novels, we moved on to Best, and then to works of a more improving nature, such as Histories and Memoirs, until we came at last to _Evenings at Home_ (which she loved as much now as she had done as a child), Devotional Works, Mrs. More and Argyle Chapel.

As I mentioned above, they lay no claim to Methodism, but Mrs. Barr is so great an admirer of Mrs. More's writings, and received such help from the _Strictures_ in particular, that almost the only consolation she found in the prospect of removing to Bath, was the knowledge that she might one day rest her eyes upon the celebrated author. Learning that Mrs. More frequently attended the Chapel, they had ventured within one Sunday morning while Mrs. Smithton lay abed (no doubt mourning the Corporation's heartless restriction against card-playing on the Sabbath), and been very kindly received, though they did not stay long afterward, and had, in fact, seen no evidence of Mrs. More. Since I could see that Miss Barr feared that she had irretrievably sunk her reputation in my eyes by this confession that her feet had crossed the threshold of a Dissenting Establishment—is not this a nice contradiction of terms?—I assured her that if Mrs. More could attend such a place without calling into question her loyalty to the Church of England, I saw no reason why others could not do the same, and that, in fact, my best friend's parents had advised me to go there myself, if ever I had the opportunity while in Bath. (And yes, such an opportunity continues to elude me; my mother still insists that we say our prayers in the Abbey, where she can at least admire the monuments and complain about the chorus.) Miss Barr looked quite shocked by this speech, and at first I thought this due to her inability to accept me as anyone with Non-conformist sympathies, but her next words showed where the true astonishment lay, for she exclaimed, "Do you mean _an Earl wished you to go to Argyle Chapel?"_

We were perhaps ten minutes straightening out this misconception, which arose from a certain description of my mother which Miss Barr had overheard last week, while standing in the door of the card-room, awaiting the egress of her own parent. Apparently my mother was at that time being pointed out to someone as "Mrs. Northcott, of Hellwick Hall in Warwickshire; her daughter practically _lives_ with the Earl of Meravon's family." (A description which I am sure my mother has herself done everything to foster except hand out broadsheets.) Once I explained to Miss Barr the difference between the Hall and the Dower House, and the sad falling away of titles between a daughter and a granddaughter, she found your parents' advice to me easier to comprehend; I thought it best to say nothing of your grandmother, as any mention of Lady Meravon's chapels might have entirely unnerved the poor girl. I collect that in her mind Aristocrats are incapable of encouraging Dissent. Clearly, she can never have heard of Lady Huntingdon; no mean feat, here in Bath.

Our conversation continued well past this juncture, but as I mean to get this posted to you today, I will give you here an intermission, and in my next letter tell you all the more personal details I learned from Miss Barr. Unlike Mr. Grayson, she had no thought of holding in reserve any part of the offering; or perhaps I am merely a more winsome priestess than Mrs. Warren.

Metaphorically yours, Ann Northcott

Chapter Seven

Letter No. 12

Tuesday, 29th May

My Dear Julia,

I do not believe I mentioned in my last letter, that the chief part of Miss Barr's charm, lay in the way she entirely forgot my injury once we were seated and it was not before her eyes. No doubt my elderly allies would attribute this to the typical callousness of youth, and exclaim at it in reproach; but for myself, I welcomed the respite. If I cannot be with my true friends, who have known me long enough to ignore my deficiencies with an easy conscience, then a healthy quantity of good-natured selfishness in my companion will serve almost as well.

And to be just to Miss Barr, she has greater reason than most gently-bred young ladies, to have her thoughts fixed upon her own troubles. She may not have to fret over the origins of her next meal, or speculate about the charitable resources of the parish, but her circumstances are nevertheless rather uncertain, balanced, as they seem to be, upon the benevolent impulses of Mrs. Smithton—a precarious perch indeed. Once induced, by our talk of books, into supposing conversation with me a very natural activity, Miss Barr did not hesitate to tell me the history of herself and her mother. It was simple enough, for they had all their lives dwelt in the small village in Wiltshire, until coming to Bath on the stage-coach last month (Miss Barr had hated the journey, as one of the passengers smelled of fish, and others had insisted on trying to engage them in friendly conversation). Mrs. Barr had married, when seventeen (her daughter's current age, by the by), the fourth son of the local squire, who had been all his life so in love with the Navy, that it was considered remarkable he had ever spared sufficient thought to taking a wife. The brief enthusiasm that plunged him into matrimony, however, proved incapable of inspiring him with any desire to remain on land, and Miss Barr estimated that of the fifteen-odd years of her life during which her father remained alive, she had been in his presence perhaps a combined total of six months. For a time, her mother's father had given them a home, though he was a clergyman with only a small living (perhaps this accounts for Miss Barr's mistrust of dissenters). When he died, he was able, by means of a small inheritance of his own, to leave Mrs. Barr sufficient income—the monies having been invested in funds—to allow mother and daughter to live for several years in perfectly respectable lodgings. From Lieutenant Barr's relatives they received little attention, as all his siblings had large and hopeful families, and seemed to fear any actual acts of kindness shown to the pair would result in some rude claim upon their own assets. The sole exception to this rule was Lt. Barr's aunt, Mrs. Smithton, who arrived one year to attend her brother's funeral, and showed a curiosity for the little neglected family, adequate to sustain a ten minute conversation with them in the churchyard. This was sufficient to inspire a desperate Mrs. Barr to write to her when, three years later, Lt. Barr died of a fever off Gibraltar, and her small inheritance, as well as whatever monies he might have accumulated, all but disappeared due to the negligence of the man into whose hands he had insisted on placing them, the last time he had returned home. Apparently the late Lieutenant, as well as being a poor judge of character, was also singularly unlucky in the matter of maritime prizes, with the result that Mrs. Barr and her daughter had no choice but to be grateful when Mrs. Smithton responded to their appeal with an invitation for them to come stay with her in Bath.

This is where Miss Barr, very correctly, ended her account, by speaking of her great-aunt's 'kindness in giving them a home,' when no body else in the family would have anything to do with them; and how conscious they both were, of what was owed to her. It is to be hoped that Mrs. Smithton's sensibilities are not acute, for a less joyous tone, in which to speak of so great a deliverance from penury, could not well be imagined, than the one then employed by Miss Barr. I ventured to ask if their benefactress expected them to perform any particular tasks in return for her generosity, and after a moment received the cautious reply, that while nothing had been said, it was understood that 'she liked Mama always to be available to play cards with her, and to read to her in the evenings' and that she 'did not wish to be bothered' by her great-niece. This, I suppose, explained why I had never seen the three together, except when they first arrived, or departed; and why shy Miss Barr seemed to spend her days cowering in chairs, with her head bent over some book or other.

Now you know my powers of sympathy are not great, but Miss Barr in her timidity reminded me so strongly of Kitty, that I found my feelings easily engaged, as I imagined how it must be for Miss Barr and her mother, to have spent so many years with almost no one to care for them except each other, now to be summarily separated for most of the day, by the whims of a virtual stranger, to whom they were, by custom, obliged to feel gratitude. Deciding, after a few seconds' unbiased thought, that I disliked the generous Mrs. Smithton a great deal, I set myself to contriving how the Barr ladies might be wrested from her tender care. All manner of plans flew through my head, the most practical of which was persuading Mrs. Warren—or perhaps Mrs. Belmar—that she was in need of hiring a pair of gentle companions. More romantically, I wondered if a rich young suitor might be found to play the role of White Knight to Miss Barr's Maiden in Distress, for in addition to the notable comeliness of her face, she was clearly intelligent--her ignorance of Debrett's notwithstanding--and had been educated beyond the common lot of young ladies, though without being in the least blue. (She can read French, and a little Italian, but not Latin or Greek; nor did she try to impress me with the wide range of her studies, or throw large numbers of quotations at me, in any language.)

On the other hand, her shyness was a distinct inconvenience. A modestly retiring nature may be charming enough in a pretty young girl when it displays itself in attractive blushes, and bashful glances, and the occasional stammered speech, but when it leads her to refuse all introductions, and keep her head lowered over a book all day, praying for invisibility, it becomes an Obstacle. Indeed, I discovered that if Miss Barr had been given her choice in the matter, she would have stayed behind in Mrs. Smithton's lodgings every day, no doubt reading in more comfort on a sofa; and it was only in deference to her mother's wishes, that she did not do so, for Mrs. Smithton did not care one way or the other, as long as Miss Barr did not attempt to interrupt them in the card-room.

No solution had presented itself to me by the time Miss Barr and I parted that first day, nor in the days since then, in which I have furthered my acquaintance with her. Ignoring her reluctance, I made her known to my elderly allies, and even contrived a brief introduction to her mother and Mrs. Smithton, as they exited the card-room one day. Mrs. Barr's eyes brightened perceptibly, when she saw her daughter actually engaged in a conversation with me, and the radiance of her smile as she acknowledged the introduction, entirely overshadowed Mrs. Smithton's complete disinterest in the proceedings.

Yours, with a fixed aversion to The Benefactress, Ann Northcott

PS. My mother does not approve of my seeking out Miss Barr, though she has not forbidden it. Being herself the daughter of a squire, she cannot quite despise the granddaughter of one; but she deeply deplores my 'repeated folly in attaching myself to young ladies of such exceptional appearance, that any comparison made by those observing us together, must be in my disfavor.' She wondered aloud if I had a fatal predilection, for befriending the most beautiful persons around me, so that I could use their proximity as an excuse for not expending too much effort on improving the few pleasing physical attributes God has granted me.

However, as this was an old irritation which she has had many years to become accustomed to, when she found I could not be easily insulted into dropping the acquaintance, she turned away, and has said no more on the subject.

Chapter Eight

Letter No. 15

Tuesday, 5th June

My Dear Julia,

I trust you know me well enough, that you will be unsurprised to learn that a week's disappointment has not proved sufficient to sway me from my scheme of rescuing the Barr ladies from their unhappy predicament. Sadly, my plan for discovering a more compassionate benefactress for them came to naught: it appears that for mature ladies in need of companions, there is never any shortage of 'poor relations' to occupy these positions; while those who do not already have such companions, are often protective of their independence, and inconveniently argue that to add the interference of a hired companion to a life already filled (variously) with the opinions of husbands, friends, grown children and servants, would be the height of folly. Even Mrs. Warren, upon whose tender heart, I confess, I had rather fixed my hopes, started, and looked alarmed at the first mention of a companion, and after some hesitation, confided to me, in a piercing undertone, her own terrifying experience with one of the creatures, a dreadfully overbearing woman, who had been inflicted on her by Mrs. Warren's well-meaning son. Mrs. Warren had only been delivered from her, in the end, by the death of the woman's brother-in-law, a blow which apparently left the widow in too weakened a state to be able to repel a determined invasion of sisterly solicitude. Mrs. Warren locked the door behind her departing 'companion' with trembling fingers, as it were, and had expressed herself so vehemently when her son brought up the subject of a replacement, that he had desisted from any further attempts to improve his mother's life.

In the face of such a tale, I could not bring myself to press upon her the merits of Mrs. Barr in the hated role, and having met with universal failure in similar conversations with the rest of my allies and several of their friends, I abandoned my attempts to place the mother in a more congenial household, and instead turned my attention toward establishing the daughter as the mistress of her own.

I know I mentioned previously that I had designs upon a rich suitor for Miss Barr, but further consideration revealed to me that, aside from the greater difficulty of finding such a prize single, agreeable, and present in Bath, there was the additional thought, that someone as shy and unworldly as Miss Barr, was ill-equipped to undertake even the nominal supervision of a rich man's household, and, despite the respectability of her birth, she would probably quickly become prey to her servants, and a disappointment to her husband. He, vexed by tears and ignorance, would most likely allow contempt to begin to color his perception of his young bride, and thereafter their marriage would inevitably be marked by discord and misery. This was an image of my heroine's future not to be borne, and thus I trimmed my pattern for Miss Barr's Suitor to include only a moderate income, and a small, comfortable house, with no more than a handful of servants, and perhaps a boy for the garden.

One would have thought that such a decision would have made my task much easier, but though at first it expanded my choices, other factors quickly intruded, diminishing my optimism, as well as my list of candidates. In compiling this list, my allies were of course most helpful, though unconscious of doing anything more strenuous than indulging in the most benign bits of gossip and speculation (anything more malicious, I understand, having been forbidden by the Rules of Bath, as laid down by the Revered Nash in a fit of whimsy). Once the fortunes of the prospective suitors were settled upon, however, there were still other matters to take into account, and as little as I thought a wealthy husband would increase Miss Barr's happiness, did I suppose that a dandy, or a gamester, or a gentleman who might have served as the model for Sir Boreas Blubber, would do so. In the end, there were only two and a half gentlemen whom I found at all acceptable—the last being only partially qualified, due to the number of young ladies I had seen him stand up with, just in the course of a single evening in the Lower Rooms. Such industry might, of course, have been solely inspired by a compassionate regard for those who might otherwise never have been granted an opportunity to dance; but having carefully scrutinized the handsome countenances of the young ladies in question, I thought not. So, though an excessively sociable disposition did not instantly preclude him from appearing on my list, I did think that such a disposition might not be the most compatible with Miss Barr's own, even if my other reservation was groundless and the young man was not an irretrievable flirt.

Having made my selection, my next course of action was to arrange the most casual of introductions, and for this I employed the invaluable Mrs. Farris, who is one of those puzzling persons who, despite spending uncounted hours of her day sitting at a card-table and speaking to no one save her immediate companions, somehow contrives to be acquainted with almost everyone, even if it is only to the extent of knowing their names, and being able to nod and smile at them in passing, without receiving a coolly repellent stare in return. Mrs. Farris, therefore, became my chosen escort whenever I could persuade Miss Barr to abandon her book and her chair in order to walk about the rooms and be admired like any normal young lady. In these instances, my usual slow progress worked very much in our favor, for Mrs. Farris had ample time as we crept about, to spot all her varied acquaintances, and begin conversations with them. Perhaps you are thinking, that I have struck upon a very roundabout way in which to promote my scheme; and it is true that after two days and a good deal of tiresome hobbling, Mrs. Farris managed to bring us to the notice of only one of my candidates, who happened to be talking to his sister as we approached. She was well-acquainted with the sister, so there was no difficulty about the business, and I had the gratification of seeing the young man gaze at my heroine with particular attention. Alas, that Miss Barr herself remained in ignorance of his admiration, for throughout the entirety of the conversation (which was, admittedly, brief), she raised her eyes no higher than the lowest fold of his cravat; and even when addressed directly, produced nothing but faint syllables that might be accepted as actual words only if one was very charitably disposed.

Of course, it would be very much easier to bring Miss Barr to the attention of young men at a ball; but though I have considered the notion of offering to pay her subscription, in the end I am always deterred by the suspicion that a person who has no more than two morning dresses is unlikely to possess the proper attire for even a cotillion-ball, and the knowledge that even if she were somehow suitably clothed and persuaded to attend, she would recoil in genuine horror if any gentlemen were actually presented to her as desirable partners for the dance. I hope I am not as mean as Mrs. Smithton, but I see no point in throwing away half a guinea on someone who would find even less pleasure in a ball than I do myself.

I would ask you to pray for my success, but as I suppose you are even now frowning down in dismay at this page, and wondering what nonsensical contrivances I am entangling poor innocent Miss Barr in, the best I can hope for is that you will wish me good Luck—since I know you do not believe in the influence of any such mythical entity.

Yours, thwarted but not yet baffled, Ann Northcott

PS. By the by, if you have persisted in sharing my letters to you with the rest of your family, I hope you have always remembered to read to them only the most sensible passages; I would not like your mother to think I arrived in Bath and immediately became a frivolous meddler, even though at times I fear that is what may have happened to me. Perhaps it is some little-known effect of sampling the waters. Let us, by all means, blame the selenite, and the inflammable gases.

Chapter Nine

Letter No. 16

Friday, 8th June

My Dear Julia,

I know it has been longer than usual since last I wrote, but you must not suppose that this was because you were superseded in my thoughts by my current activities, as the truth is that I began several times to pick up my pen, only to lay it aside upon the reflection that I really had nothing of interest to tell you....[M]y vigorous efforts to bring my shrinking heroine to the attention of various potential heroes produced, in the end, nothing but aches and pains for myself, and I thus spent both Wednesday and Thursday at home, reading _Manfred_ , and making what amends I could to my leg, which was very vexed with me indeed, for having paraded about for hours with so little to show for it. This morning I was recovered enough to return to the pump-room, and having allowed my ladies the felicity of clustering about and being concerned for a time, I then went in search of Miss Barr. She had been displaced from her usual corner by a trio of gentlemen, who had no better manners than to stand about and discuss politics in a place that was clearly designed for girlish confidences, and thus I was forced to look about the room for a good ten minutes before I recognized my heroine's curls bent over a familiar tome. She started, glancing up in trepidation when I spoke her name, and I was surprised to see evidence that she had recently lost a struggle with tears. I had but a brief moment to wonder what affecting novel could have called them forth, when her expression became suffused with delight and relief, and she jumped from her chair, jogging the arm of the rather commodious matron to her left, who had fallen into a peaceful doze, her head comfortably supported by the soft bulk of her chins. Thus reminded of her situation, whatever rapturous exclamation Miss Barr might otherwise have uttered at sight of me was interrupted by the matron's inarticulate sound of complaint, and only after being reassured by a small snore, did Miss Barr venture to press a hand to my arm, and whisper a tearful welcome.

We abandoned the slumberous one as quietly as possible, and had not gone five yards, before Miss Barr was confessing the agonies of regret she had suffered the day before, believing that my absence could have no other meaning than that she had committed some heinous offense, which I had found so repulsive that I had stayed away from the pump-room rather than risk meeting her again. Such anxiety over the maintenance of my good opinion struck me as so excessive, that at first I suspected her of a hitherto unsuspected vein of satire; but her eyes, and the traces of tears still upon her face, proclaimed her perfectly sincere. I stifled the still, small voice that suggested to me that a true heroine would be a creature of more spirit, and set myself to rid her of her egregious misapprehension about the tenderness of my sensibility.

She proved to be easily comforted, for which I was grateful—you know I have little patience with those who cling to their pangs of gratuitous remorse—but her feelings remained in so fragile a state, that I deemed it unwise to seek to further my scheme before she had fully recovered, and instead spent more than an hour encouraging her to recall tales of her childhood. I was pleased to learn that it had been a notably happy one, despite its simplicity, and the almost entire dearth of any male figure below the age of threescore and ten. Miss Barr's grandmother had apparently been a woman of superior understanding and education, and though Mrs. Barr had often lamented her own deficiency in comparison, by all accounts she was a most excellent and conscientious parent, instructing her daughter in both domestic and purely intellectual spheres, and assisting her father in his duties as best she could. Indeed, in the whole of Miss Barr's narrative, I could perceive her mother as possessing only one defect in her character, and this was, that she had no taste for novels or modern plays, and would prefer to walk about the countryside with Smith's _Botany_ in her hand, in search of some obscure flower, or learn a new song upon her mother's old Spanish guitar, than read the works of Miss Baillie or even Madame D'arblay. Miss Barr, however, with a daughter's partiality, would not admit even this to be a flaw, and of course it would not be well done to make any attempt to correct her thinking in such a case.

Although the morning did nothing to advance my plot, it left me more determined than ever to find some way to deliver the Barrs from Mrs. Smithton, and so must not be dismissed as entirely unprofitable. When eventually I decided that I must return to my allies, Miss Barr accompanied me with only the slightest show of reluctance, and later we undertook the adventure of following in the intrepid steps of Mrs. Belmar and Mrs. Joles, as they ventured out of the pump-room in search of certain pastries, which were reported to be of unusual excellence. Whether their quality was unusual for Bath, I could not say; but they were certainly very good, and when Miss Barr and I parted for the day, I had the gratification of knowing that she no longer had the marks of sorrow upon her face, but only perhaps a crumb or two of some superior confection.

My improved spirits lasted until the ball this evening, where I was forced to watch so many ladies and gentlemen chatting easily together (even when they were not dancing), that I could not help but be reminded of the maladroit nature of my heroine, and the improbability that, in the time at my disposal, I could ever prevail upon her to so much as look up and smile at one of my candidates.

Would even Sir Charles Grandison have been struck with the virtues of Miss Byron, if, after he had routed the villainous Sir Hargrave, instead of casting herself into her rescuer's arms, she had instead gazed in a fixed manner at her shoes, and mumbled, and displayed only a subtle anxiety to be gone from his presence? I think not.

Your rather disheartened, Ann

Chapter Ten

Letter No. 19th

Wednesday, 13th June, 1804

My dear Julia,

Will you think me a most fair-weather friend, if I admit that my first impulse upon learning that Miss Barr would be unable to come to the pump-room today, was an inward sigh of relief? It was as if I faced the prospect of a walk to Kingsmead in the rain, only to be told at the last moment, that someone had summoned a chair for me.

Mind you, it is not her company in itself that I have begun to find burdensome, but rather the weight of my own expectations, which every day seem to grow heavier, as I contemplate past failures, and the intractable bashfulness of my heroine. I know I have several times compared her to Kitty, but I think now, that this is unfair to Kitty, for she has in the past demonstrated some consciousness that shyness is not actually listed as one of the virtues, and strives to overcome its more violent manifestations, at least on those occasions when she is convinced that to allow them free reign would reflect ill on her family. Miss Barr, on the other hand, seems unaware that there exists any alternative to following her natural inclinations in this respect; and I am very sure, that if someone were so obliging as to introduce turtle-shells as acceptable garb for gentle-bred females, Miss Barr would don one with pleasure, and instantly retract all her appendages within, whenever she was menaced by any extraordinary danger, such as the possibility that she might be addressed civilly by some person previously unknown to her.

So, as I said, I was very far from being cast into despair, when, as I sat talking with Mrs. Warren this morning, Mrs. Barr suddenly appeared before me, looking both anxious and relieved, and pressed upon me a much-folded paper, accompanied by the hurried words, "Miss Northcott! I feared I should not have time to find you—Charlotte awoke this morning with a sore throat, and begged me to tell you she is very sorry she would be unable to see you today, and to give you this note. You have been so very kind to her—she could not bear the thought that you might believe she was merely amusing herself elsewhere today, without bothering to tell you of her plans."

I did not immediately recognize Mrs. Barr, having only once spoken to her face to face, and could only hope that my momentary confusion was read by her as an emotion more appropriate for the situation than the lightening of spirits I actually felt. I accepted the note with thanks, and would have asked for details of Miss Barr's condition, save that as I opened my mouth to do so, an impatient voice, raised over the general murmurs, came to both our ears: "Edith! What are you about? They are making up the tables!" Mrs. Barr gave me an apologetic look, and with a last whispered "I beg your pardon! Thank you!" hurried to catch up with The Benefactress, the top of whose turban could barely be seen, standing at the door to the card-room, and turning angrily about in search of the delinquent Edith.

Unfolded, Miss Barr's note repeated almost verbatim the message given to me by her mother, sprinkled with about a dozen requests for forgiveness, as if Miss Barr imagined I should hold her responsible for daring to become ill after I had gone to the trouble of befriending her. Clearly, I would have to write a reply in order to reassure her, lest she waste any more time worrying over my supposed indignation, instead of enjoying the opportunity she had at last been granted, of remaining at home with only her books for company. Thinking gratefully of the earl's granddaughter who had pressed upon me a new pocket-book before I left for Bath, I extracted both it and my pencil, only to be confronted with a point so dulled as to be useless. Mrs. Warren, who had been employed ever since Mrs. Barr's departure in commiserating with me on my friend's illness, was now given a new object for her sympathy, and the frustration of inferior pencils which were either too hard or too soft, or broke off when one needed them most, immediately became her topic of choice; for you understand that my own stupidity in failing to remember to renew the tip could never be an acceptable theme for one of my ladies.

Resigning myself to the inconvenience of having to arrange for a note to be delivered to Miss Barr later—I had hoped to be able to give it to her mother to take to her—I put away my writing implements and prepared to smile and agree and nod for Mrs. Warren's benefit, even though I could not quite see why I should take any particular joy in speaking ill of German pencils, which have never done me any particular harm. After the first few minutes, I ceased to really attend to her words with any care, and so was rather startled when she suddenly exclaimed, "Oh! But there is that kind Mr. Grayson! He is certain to carry one—scholarly gentlemen always do, you know!"

Since I scarcely liked to confess that I had not been listening to her, and thus had no notion of why the sight of poor Mr. Grayson, unwisely choosing to pass by at that moment, should arouse such joy in her breast, I could make no sensible objection as she summoned him over, her singularly penetrating voice making no difficulty of the business. The mystery was soon solved, as she poured the sad tale of my dulled pencil into his ears, my anxiety to write to my suffering friend, and her own certitude that he, being a 'scholarly gentleman' would be able to fix the problem by producing a pen-knife. I would not have blamed him for producing a politic equivocation instead, and then retreating in all haste, but he merely smiled at Mrs. Warren as if she had amused him, and having retrieved from his pocket a small and unexpectedly elegant example of the required tool, he good-naturedly sat down, accepted my worn little pencil, and sharpened it with careless efficiency. Receiving it back with thanks, I could not help blushing a little when he murmured, "I trust this will in some measure atone for the unwelcome nature of my first offering, Miss Northcott."

Happily, Mrs. Warren was too busy extolling the virtues of the purest plumbago to take any notice of this remark, and after I had responded with a somewhat confused, "Certainly!" he took pity on me and returned his attention to my companion, who had begun to comment with satisfaction on the fate of the French, who by murdering their king and queen and going to war against every body had condemned themselves to the use of the most wretched pencils, and that whatever might be claimed on the subject, no one could convince her that clay was an acceptable medium. She spoke with such authority on the subject that the thought crossed my mind, that perhaps her family name had been Middleton [Editor's Note: Middleton was a noted 18th century 'brand' of pencil]; this unworthy suspicion was quickly dismissed, however, upon the recollection that my mother would never have entrusted the care of even so unsatisfactory a daughter as myself, into the hands of one tainted by the odor of black lead and cedar shavings.

Mr. Grayson appeared to find nothing reprehensible in her knowledge of the common details of pencil-making, and entered into the conversation she was having with herself so kindly, that she soon abandoned her abuse of French ingenuity, and remembered to ask after the health of his aunt. It was as she exclaimed in gratification at the favorable report—for Mrs. Warren takes as great a pleasure in hearing of the success of Bath waters, as if she were herself responsible for infusing them with the proper minerals, and had lit the subterranean fires with her own hands—that I was visited by a most wonderful recollection of the fact, that _Mr. Grayson possessed a recently-widowed aunt_. My heart actually leapt with excitement, so engaged have I become in my quest to find happiness for my heroine and her mother. I at once became more mindful of the discussion taking place beside me, but though I was in time to smile and nod in order to show my pleasure in hearing of his aunt's improvement, and utter an agreeable sound signifying nothing when appealed to by Mrs. Warren, to support some point she was making about the private baths, I was unable to turn the conversation into any useful channels, before Mr. Grayson took his polite leave of us.

This was a blow, but only a light one. It was an easy enough matter to persuade Mrs. Warren to continue on the subject of Mrs. Grayson and the benefits of Bath, and a slight hint that I would not be adverse to meeting her, and perhaps receive some encouragement concerning my own condition, was all that was required. Mrs. Warren immediately received the idea as a most excellent one, and I knew that before the day was out, she would have arranged the matter, if Mrs. Grayson was at all willing (it is one of Mrs. Warren's most reliable characteristics, that she cannot abide a delay).

Let me say at once, that Mrs. Grayson is one of the plainest women I have ever met: her eyes are small and of an undistinguished hue, her nose and chin both are over-large for beauty, and her mouth is of the thin and uncompromising sort usually attributed to stern schoolmistresses who look upon children as small evils necessary for the continuation of their income. And yet, once she smiled and began to speak, her expression became so pleasant, and her demeanor was so kind and her conversation so lively and intelligent, that I could not recall when I had last met any woman whom I instantly liked as well, unless it may have been your mother, when first you took me to meet her, and she called me Miss Northcott as if I were a young lady grown, and offered me strawberries and seedcakes. Thus unexpectedly charmed by Mrs. Grayson, after no more than ten minutes' discourse I found that I had made the decision to tell her of the Barr's unhappy circumstances quite frankly, and without any other thought in my head, than the conviction that if she could help them in any way, she would be more than eager to do so; any attempt to manipulate her into doing as I wished, would have been both unnecessary, and an insult to her character. In this, too, she reminded me of Lady Frances, whom I can easily imagine, even suffering from ill-health and recent bereavement, as being still eager to turn her thoughts toward assisting others, with no notion of doing anything in the least remarkable.

One thing only did I find at all discouraging, and this was the cool gaze of Mr. Grayson, which, for the most part, he kept fixed upon me as I spoke with his aunt. It was far less cordial, than any look he had bestowed upon me in our two previous encounters; nor was it explained until near the end of our conversation, when Mrs. Grayson, having firmly stated her intention of helping Mrs. Barr and her daughter, amended her avowal with the words "always supposing that my dear nephew approves." This was accompanied by a laughing glance in the direction of the nephew in question, who returned only a lift of his brow, and a faint smile which proclaimed that, though she might choose to make light of the notion, his approval was by no means assured. After a moment, perhaps feeling that I deserved fair warning that all my plans might yet come to naught, he returned his gaze to me and said, "You should know, Miss Northcott, that my aunt is the quintessential Good Samaritan. She is forever rushing to the aid of the wounded and destitute, and generously pouring out both her compassion and her coins, undeterred by the fact that on occasion those she has helped have later proven to have more in common with robbers, than with victims travelling innocently down from Jerusalem. For many years my uncle made it his business to keep an eye on those who appealed to her charity, and sought, with varying degrees of success, to escort her firmly to the other side of the road, whenever he judged certain scenes of affliction to be lacking in verisimilitude. Now that he has passed on to his reward, it appears that I, however unsuited to the task, have inherited this singularly thankless mantle."

Poor Mrs. Warren was rendered almost incoherent with horror at this implication that I would ever support the pretensions of anyone of inferior character, and could scarcely form her objections, which were, for once, uttered in an almost fainting voice; but Mrs. Grayson seemed only to find her nephew's speech amusing, for she reached over and patted his hand, and smilingly reassured him that she had every confidence that he would prove 'a veritable Solomon'. She then leaned toward me, and added in a lowered, but perfectly audible tone, "My dear husband always let me do just as I wished in such matters, and only intervened afterward, if anyone began to be a little troublesome." She then set herself to the task of soothing Mrs. Warren's outraged feelings, and persuading her that Mr. Grayson had not the least intention of impugning my judgment. For myself, I was not convinced of this, and kept a wary eye on the fellow; but though he had cast his eyes briefly toward the heavens when his aunt likened him to Solomon, he said no more, and when he caught my eye on him, permitted his face to relax into the sort of half-amused curl of the lip, for which the word wry was probably invented. I was not encouraged, as it was an expression that seemed to promise nothing, save that he would do as he thought best.

I am sure I do not know why anyone, even the scholarly Mr. Grayson, should raise any objections to my Barr ladies; but the very possibility that he could, and that he might advise against his aunt's charitable impulse for some whim or prejudice of his own, has brought an anxiousness to my thoughts, which they never had before. I want to believe nothing but good of him, and yet, what do I truly know of him, save that he is at least occasionally kind to elderly ladies, and carries a pen-knife which I covet? For all I know to the contrary, his kindness may be of the sort that shrivels at the first hint of inconvenience to himself, and assisting his aunt to take on the burden of a penniless widow and her daughter, is, after all, asking a good deal more of a man, than either fetching a glass of water, or sharpening a pencil.

Yours, full of affection and anxiety, Ann Northcott

Chapter Eleven

Letter No. 21

Monday, 18th June

My dear Julia,

I believe I am now privy to the feelings of a general or an admiral, who has spent countless hours frowning over maps and receiving intelligence about the enemy, and planning his battle strategies with the utmost care, only to come to the point, when he must entrust the final execution of his plans to others. However highly he may rate the talents and dedication of those officers carrying out his orders, I suppose he cannot help but suffer from moments of apprehension, when he paces about, wondering if some unforeseen circumstance has sprung up which his plans have not taken into account, leaving his men no choice but to act under their own direction. No doubt your uncle, Major Merrion, would say that a good general should always make arrangements for all possible situations, or that he should entrust his plans only to those subordinates in whose judgment he is supremely confident.

I have no quarrel with your uncle, and in the army perhaps it is different, but in my own situation, flung as I have been into the midst of strangers, I have had little choice in the matter of whom I shall trust. I say nothing against Mrs. Grayson: twice now, I have seen her enter the card-room, escorted by her nephew—whose reluctance, if it existed, was not visible across the room—and since she told me that she has never had any use for cards, there can be no reason for this, other than her determination to seek out Mrs. Barr. Nevertheless, I am uneasy. How can a woman with no opinion of cards hope to win even a few words from Mrs. Smithton, let alone an opportunity to engage in an extended conversation with her companion? What if I have entirely mistaken the situation, and Mrs. Barr, once seated at a table with her hands sprouting various tantalizing combinations, is as engrossed in the fate of her kings and queens as any Jacobite could be? Or—if I am not mistaken in my estimate of her character—what if Mr. Grayson is unable to discern the difference between necessity and preference, and adjudges her a hardened gamester, ready to cast away the family jewels in hopes of a better hand?

You will say, perhaps, that there is nothing to prevent me from walking into the card-room if I wish, and appraising such matters for myself, instead of waiting impatiently for a bulletin—but if you say such a thing you will be quite wrong, for I am as firmly banished from those 'paste-board temples' as Miss Barr, with this difference, that while Mrs. Smithton only desires to remain undisturbed, my mother wishes to maintain the fiction, 1) that her insistence that I accompany her to Bath was a wise and excellent decision; 2) that I have made a most favorable impression upon society here, and am spending my days forming friendships with high-ranking persons whose names are neither Parry nor Merrion; and 3) that despite the fact that she is my mother, there is really no connection between herself and that fashionably-dressed but otherwise insignificant young lady with the limp and the astonishing lack of charm. All three of these happy fancies would be effectively shattered were I to droop impatiently about the card-room, like a small ragamuffin holding a gentleman's horse outside a shop in expectation of a coin, and thus I am forbidden entrance into her _sanctum sanctorum_.

And if by chance you are wondering why I can gain no intelligence from Miss Barr herself, the sad fact is, that she remains ill and confined to Mrs. Smithton's house; and though I may send her all the letters I wish, I am not allowed to visit her, as my mother fears a contagion. Today I remembered to place myself in a chair convenient to those approaching the card-room, and was briefly cheered when Mrs. Barr smiled her tired smile when she saw me, and wandered just slightly out of the true path, in order to deliver to me another note. However, it was just Miss Barr being grateful for my 'excessive kindness' in taking the trouble to send her a message by her mother, and overwhelmed by the fact that I had later sent a footman to their lodgings with the first two volumes of _Evenings at Home._ (These I had purchased for her at a book-seller's last week, after I learned that most of their books had been, of necessity, sold before they left Wiltshire. I thought your father would approve the gift, though no doubt your mother would have suggested one volume, and a packet of lozenges, as more practical.) She wrote many rapturous lines about the comfort she had received from being able to read the 'dear tales' once again, but, maddeningly, not one word about anybody named Grayson, with whom her mother might recently have become acquainted.

Such a disappointment after my initial surge of hope was bad enough, but what was worse, is that I believe Miss Barr may have unwittingly enclosed a breath of contagion within her note, for unless I am very much deceived, my throat is even now plotting against me, and I shall wake up tomorrow feeling as if I had swallowed a bowl of sharp-edged rocks for dinner. I have taken care not to breathe too near these pages as I write them, but to be safe, perhaps you ought to read them outside, with a breeze blowing about you—I shall place a warning to this effect above the seal.

But no, I forgot: you hardly ever catch cold. Well, in any event, you must take care that Kitty does not come upon my letter by accident, as she is sure to begin sneezing in an instant.

Yours, filled with a foreshadowing of doom,

Ann

Chapter Twelve

Letter No. 22

[Tuesday, 19th June?]

Dear Julia,

How depressing it is, to have all one's worst prognostications come to pass; it is enough to make one give up the role of prophetess altogether. I did, indeed, awaken with all [the] marks of a dreadful cold, my throat so painful that I could find no comfort in anything, save the thought that I would at least be allowed to savor my misery without the strain of having to appear anything but bad-tempered. Nell does not regard my grumblings, and all the rest of the servants stay away, having no wish to be given a cold, even if it is a superior sort of cold, that does not disdain to attach itself to a daughter of the House of Northcott. My mother, of course, gave her directions to me through the door, advising me to take some lumps of sugar dipped in brandy if it grew worse. I wondered briefly if I could prevail upon her to take a message to my allies, as I knew Mrs. Warren would certainly worry if I did not make my usual appearance, but my mother was gone before I could decide on the attempt. Afterward I was glad she had not linger[ed], as I realized how silly it was for me to suppose that she would not be importuned by her court almost the moment she entered the pump-room alone, or that she would hesitate to make known the reason for my absence, with a suitable display of maternal anxiety. Sadly, a headcold is not dramatic enough to agitate even a mother's tender heart for long; but there was always the possibility that she could persuade herself that I suffered from a hint of fever: judged through a door, as it was, my condition might have been dire indeed.

This is all I mean to write now, as I have really nothing further to say of this utterly wasted day, except that I am glad it is over. Perhaps Mrs. Warren will have found a way to tell Mrs. Barr of my state, and she will tell Miss Barr, who will send me a note tomorrow, and brighten my wretched existence. Or perhaps a long letter [from] my dear friend Julia will arrive instead, which will brighten it to an infinitely great[er] degree, even as its amusing descriptions of simple country pleasures rouses me to new, sharper pangs of longing to be home, and able to walk over to Merriweather whenever I please. How frustrating and unsatisfactory a thing, is a friendship composed of paper, ink, and sealing wax!

(Please tell your mother, that Nell appears to have taken her as a model for how one behaves toward an invalid, and has been cosseting me and speaking to me in calm and sensible tones, no matter how cross and fretful I may be. Some of her remedies have even proved a little efficacious, and since she tells me that the one with the Tamarind water is "Lady Frances's own mixture", I have to render to your mother double thanks, for sharing with Nell both her example and her receipt.)

The next evening.

My throat is somewhat improved today, since I obediently added the application of a flannel dipped in hartshorn to my nightly preparations. In addition, I have been able to read a number of _Lyrical Ballads_ without a violent headache coming on, though this was small comfort, as I was forced into this unprofitable activity, from having no missive from Miss Parry to engage my attention, and solicit a reply—and only one page from Miss Barr. This last I received solely because of the thoughtfulness of Mrs. Warren, who not only encouraged her to write it, but actually undertook to see that it was delivered to me without any inconvenience to my mother. The contents of Miss Barr's note were as follows:

Yesterday she was at last well enough to return to the public rooms, and inspired by the prospect of seeing me again, she ventured forth, only to be nearly crushed by disappointment and remorse, when she was apprised of my absence, and the reason for it. Fortunately, though her contrition may have been acute, it was not effusive—perhaps because of a shortage of paper—and having disposed of it in the first sentence, she then spent the two remaining paragraphs on the much more interesting intelligence, that she had spent the first part of the morning with Mrs. Warren and Mrs. Joles at their insistence, and that Mrs. Joles had just persuaded them that they should all go out in search of pastries, when Miss Barr had looked up, and to her astonishment seen her mother approaching, in company with 'a strange gentleman in a blue coat.' And yes, my dear Julia, this gentlemen turned out to be _a friend of Mrs. Warren's named Grayson._

Miss Barr thought Mr. Grayson—I collect that the 'strange' was merely in reference to her ignorance of his identity—very pleasant and agreeable, and when he learned from Mrs. Warren of Miss Northcott's indisposition, he said he was very sorry to hear of it, and that his aunt would be similarly afflicted by the news, as she had been 'very favorably impressed with Miss Northcott when they met.' This aunt, Miss Barr was then astonished to discover, was at present playing cards with Mrs. Smithton, having persuaded her to engage in a game of piquet. According to Mr. Grayson, his aunt had very recently developed an irrational passion for cards, and as she played poorly and lost well, it had been suggested to her by more than one person that she might find herself most welcomed at Mrs. Smithton's table.

Mrs. Barr had uttered a small laugh at this remark, and afterward raised a hand to her mouth, looking a trifle startled and alarmed, as if the sound had been both unexpected and involuntary; she then blushed and began immediately to speak of how very kind Mrs. Grayson had been to her. Miss Barr said she, too, had been astonished by her mother's laughter, as it had been many months since her mother had found anything in her life amusing enough to win from her more than the briefest of smiles.

The interesting portion of the note ended here, leaving me almost deranged with impatience to rise from my bed and seek out more information. I eventually calmed myself with more Ballads, though not before I had reread Miss Barr's account three or four more times, and extracted from it two points that had not at first struck me: 1) that she is entirely too susceptible to astonishment—what emotion is left to her if some truly shocking incident were to occur? And 2) Mrs. Warren is apparently capable of a deal more discretion than I had ever suspected, for she seems never even to have hinted to Miss Barr, of any connection between myself, and the Graysons' sudden entry into the lives of Mrs. Smithton and Mrs. Barr. This was a disturbing discovery, for it has never been Mrs. Warren's discretion that I valued; indeed, quite the opposite.

Ah well, one can hope that her silence on the subject was a mere aberration, and that in all other circumstances her tongue will run on as freely as ever.

Yours, improved in both body and spirit, Ann

PS. You will doubtless have noted, that Miss Barr was astonishingly reticent on the subject of Mr. Grayson's appearance, choosing instead, most commendably and unnaturally, to concentrate upon those incorporeal virtues, which the homeliest of gentleman might also possess. Lest you assume from this that she is either incurably noble-minded, or deficient in taste, let me share with you my own conclusion on the matter, which is, that in all likelihood her reserve was entirely due to the fact, that she never looked at him, except from a considerable distance, at which point he appeared to her only as 'a stranger in a blue coat.' Once he began to approach near enough that she might have been able to distinguish his features, her shyness would have prevented her from raising her eyes much above the height of his upper waistcoat button—or at least, such has been my observation, whenever I was with her in the presence of a gentleman, whatever may have been his age, or personal attributes.

PPS. Do not imagine that because I only mentioned en passant the fact that I received no letter from you today, that I have forgotten this distressing circumstance. I forgive you for it; but be warned, I shall expect a _manuscript_ tomorrow.

Chapter Thirteen

Letter No. 23

Thursday. 21st June

My dear Julia,

You must never again waste your ink upon an apology for the length of one of your letters—do you think for a moment, that I begrudge a few pennies, when I would happily hand over a guinea for every page, if His Majesty's Mails were so despotic as to require it? On the other hand, if your apology was merely intended for a gentle hint to me, to restrain my own pen, then I fear you have gravely overestimated my powers of inference: I remain blithely confident, that you live with no other thought in your head, than wondering when my next report will be delivered to you, and that you would not wish to be deprived of even one lively phrase, no, not if it meant you had to bargain away your putative firstborn in order to pay the postage.

After such a beginning, you have every right to suppose that I am about to launch into a most exciting narrative of the days' events—a Masqued Ball and a highwayman would not, perhaps, be too much to expect—but alas, I have very little to report, because my sore throat and general _malaise_ have but given way to a most irritating and persistent cough, so that my mother has decreed that I am still too unwell to return to the public rooms; and if I suspect that this decision was inspired almost entirely by her disinclination to have anyone witness her daughter in the throes of an inelegant coughing fit, that has little to say to the matter. It does, however, make for a very tiresome day, and so when a servant came to tell me that Mrs. Warren had called, I was pleased enough that I would have jumped up from the sofa and fallen on my visitor's neck in gratitude, if I had not known that was the very last behavior to reassure her in the circumstances.

She entered the room with a handkerchief clasped to the lower part of her face, which, from the scent that began gradually to permeate the room, I decided must have been soaked in a mixture containing white vinegar. This precaution aside, she did not appear unduly fearful of catching my complaint, and would, I think, have soon been fluttering about my sofa, straightening shawls and re-arranging pillows and pressing more tea upon me, if I had not begged her to keep at least the width of the carpet between us. Reminded of her determination to be cautious, she once more raised her linen shield, and sat down, looking as if her compassionate nature was waging a furious war with her common sense. Wishing to know what she could tell me of the Barrs—and hoping to distract her from becoming involved in tedious inquiries about my health—I opened my mouth, and was immediately overtaken by a prolonged bout of coughing, which was only brought under control with the aid of half a cup of tea, a spoonful of honey, a lozenge, and a warm moist cloth hastily fetched by Nell, who came in answer to Mrs. Warren's frantic summons, after I had repeatedly waved away her own offers of assistance.

When at last the humiliating attack was driven off, and my involuntary tears blotted away, I subsided back into my nest of shawls, feeling as weak as a half-drowned kitten, and apparently looking no better. To her everlasting credit, Mrs. Warren displayed no desire to flee such a house of pestilence, but instead, having completely abandoned her protective handkerchief, sat on the edge of her chair, clasping her little knobby hands together and exclaiming, "Oh, poor dear Ann—I mean Miss Northcott!" and "You do look dreadfully pale and ill—are you quite certain you should not return to bed? You must not stay up on my account!" and things of that nature. (Let me hasten to say, that she persists in calling me Miss Northcott through no fault of mine; I believe it must better suit her notion of the deference due my mother's daughter). Cheered to discover that I apparently looked much more ill than I felt—I have been avoiding mirrors for days, as I did not wish to see how red my nose might have become—I strove for a brave and pathetic smile, and after assuring her in my newly ravaged voice that I was quite recovered, I implored her to tell me all the news of our mutual friends and acquaintances.

Despite appearing rather unconvinced by my protestations of wellness, my visitor could not resist such a request, and at once launched into a most complete account of the daily activities of every body in whom I might be supposed to have the faintest interest; and since my circle of Bath acquaintances is not, after all, so very large, I did not have long to wait before she began to speak of the _dramatis personae_ in my own private little play. Of my heroine, Miss Barr, she had a great deal to say, having spent considerable time with her over the course of the past few days; though only, Mrs. Warren hastened to assure me, because she knew I had been so gracious as to offer 'the poor girl' my friendship, and because she had seemed so forlorn when she learned of my absence. Taking this for evidence of Miss Barr's high regard for me (rather than the general loneliness which it undoubtedly reflected) Mrs. Warren had made an effort to befriend her, in the belief that this course of action would meet with my approval. Naturally, I replied that she could not have done anything that would have pleased me more; all the while thinking, how very odd it was, that this earnest septuagenarian, with so many decades of life and sorrow and survival behind her, should care a fig for the opinion of a sapling such as myself, simply because of my mother's ability to imprint others with her unalterable conviction of her own superiority.

On the subject of their meeting with Mr. Grayson and Mrs. Barr, of which I had high expectations of entertainment, Mrs. Warren proved more disappointing: she was too easily distracted by incidental matters, to be able to give me the properly Boswellian account my soul longed for. Despite his _faux pas_ last week in admitting to doubts about my acumen, Mr. Grayson and his coats continue to be great favorites of hers, with the result that I learned far too much of what he had to say concerning my current ill health and related topics brought to his attention by Mrs. Warren and Mrs. Joles, with no more than a sentence or two spared for Mrs. Barr. Mrs. Warren did, at least, allow her to be both 'pretty-behaved' and 'well-spoken', which reassured me somewhat, as I had been unable to help ascribing some measure of the daughter's shyness to the mother, given the similarity of their features; and I did not believe that an unexplained refusal to meet his gaze, or speak to him directly, was likely to convince Mr. Grayson of Mrs. Barr's worthiness to receive his aunt's _largesse_.

Mrs. Warren, alas, had no opinion to offer on the state of amicability that might have existed between the two as they approached; she had not been attending. After introductions had been made, and a few meaningless civilities exchanged, the five of them had fallen into a pattern, which had the Barr ladies a little separated, with their arms entwined, and talking together as eagerly as if they were two school friends reunited after the holidays, while my two allies and Mr. Grayson had turned away to talk about poor Miss Northcott. And this, if you please, was really the only part of the encounter that was fixed in Mrs. Warren's memory with any tenacity! My suspicion that Mrs. Grayson had, by her sudden interest in playing _à deux_ , cleverly arranged for her nephew to have an opportunity to satisfy his doubts about Mrs. Barr's character must remain unconfirmed, as must the state of his own convictions on the subject: Mrs. Warren had no interest in speaking to him of any matters so unconnected with my supposed sufferings. For his sake, I must hope that her appreciation for tragic plays inspired her to embellish any of his responses which she deemed insufficiently emotive, for if he was half as distressed over my head-cold as she recounted to me, than he is either a dismal pessimist who imagines every sore throat must be putrid, or he has fallen so violently in love with me that it has utterly scrambled his good sense.

Poor Mrs. Warren; I fear she will be excessively disappointed when Mr. Grayson takes himself and his beautiful coats off to Cambridge—or perhaps to Northumberland with his aunt—without sparing so much as a backward glance for the myriad charms of Miss Northcott. For myself, I will be overjoyed at his departure, if only he will ensure that my Barr ladies are safely bundled into the carriage along with his kindly and ingenious aunt.

Yours, much heartened, Ann

PS. On reading this over, I feel that I have been insufficiently grateful to Mrs. Warren in my comments. I might have found her narratives rather deficient in detail, but I hope I do full justice to the benevolence which led her to call on me today, with no other purpose than to raise my spirits, at the risk of her own health, and in defiance of my own mother's advice to her. Even after she had taken her leave, I found her conversation invaluable, for she had given me so many new things to think of, and to write of to you, that here it is almost 9 o' clock, and another day in Bath has passed, which I will never again have to endure.

PPS. Nell has once more dived into the abyss of your mother's wisdom, and produced a concoction composed of linseed, liquorice, rum, raisins, lemon-juice, and about two dozen other ingredients—not excepting, I suspect, eye of newt—which has emerged triumphant even against the Coughs of Bath.

Chapter Fourteen

Letter No. 25

Tuesday, 26th June

My dear Julia,

If there had ever been any doubt in my mind about the disagreeableness of Bath, today has removed it. Having risen much earlier than usual and taken extra pains to present myself faultless and restored to health to my mother, I had the happiness of gaining her reluctant consent to join her when she went out. My good-humor even withstood the mistrustful glances she kept bestowing upon me as we awaited the chairs, whenever I made some small sound which might, to a nervous mind, have seemed preparatory to a more violent respiration; and I resolutely took no notice when she carefully maintained a distance between us of not less than two yards as we entered the rooms. All this was no more than I had expected, and a small enough price to pay in order to find myself once more in the theater of my play, as it were, instead of being forced to read the notices the next day.

At first, all went well. I was greeted with gratifying expressions of relief and pleasure by all my elderly allies, who treated me rather as if I were a combination of Dorcas raised again to life, and someone in imminent danger of suffering a relapse and retiring to her deathbed. The report brought to them by Mrs. Warren of my coughing fit had instilled in them a general alarm, which was only nourished by my appearance among them, clad in the most unbecoming dress I own. They heaped upon me all those sympathetic phrases that leave one aware that one is not looking one's best, and exchanged anxious murmurs about my condition when they thought I could not hear them, poor pale sickly creature that I am, unable to support even a headcold with grace. Mrs. Ashford, indeed, looked at me with such a searching and intent gaze, that I was in momentary expectation of her pulling out a watch and seizing my wrist to feel for my pulse--

"Thinks she--'tis all over--Ann's sentence is past,

And now I must count just how long she may last."

She evidently conquered the _impulse_ , however, and only managed to murmur the word 'consumptive' to Mrs. Belmar, before being quickly hushed by Mrs. Warren, who seemed to take my restoration to the public rooms as a particular compliment to her own skills as a visitor of the sick.

All this went very well, as I said: what did not, was the true reason for my eagerness to return to society. The hours passed, and still there was no sign of either Barrs or Graysons, and not even Mrs. Smithton made an appearance. My ladies were as ignorant of the reason for these unusual absences as I, and though speculations abounded, and Mrs. Harris made inquiries among some of her friends, nothing was discovered, save the useless fact, that on the previous evening they had all left the rooms together, and someone had overheard the Graysons offering to share their carriage with Mrs. Smithton and her young relatives, as everyone knew Mrs. Smithton kept no horses, and was too mean to hire a chair, unless it was raining furiously enough to make one look about for an ark.

I strove to convince myself that this was good news, in that it showed Mrs. Grayson had not abandoned her interest in the Barrs, but was instead taking pains to ensure their comfort. Nevertheless, I could not be easy, knowing how quickly the threads of one's best stratagems can snag on some unforeseen obstacle, and begin to unravel, unless someone is present to hold them together and tie the necessary knots. No doubt, in true Parry fashion, you are now wondering where, in all this, is my faith in the mysterious workings of Providence; and all I have to say to that, is that past experience has shown, that Providence is a deal more inclined to work things out as I wish, if I am present and able to push them along in the right direction. And now you are laughing at my inconsistent similes, and asking how one pushes forward a knotted thread—and for the answer to that question, I must refer you to the example of your cousin Merivale's cat: the best method is plainly to herd the whole knotted tangle into a small pile, and then run up on it in a series of leaps, and chase it across the parquetry with your paws until it disappears under a bookcase, defying all attempts at extraction.

The next evening.

Another interminable day of sitting, and talking, and listening, and hobbling about, and pretending to drink the waters to please my allies. No Barrs; no Grayson. Mrs. Smithton arrived, rather later than has been her wont, her countenance cast in even grimmer lines than usual, and entirely alone. Seeking intelligence of my friends, Mrs. Farris heroically flung herself and two of her fellow card-players into the breach, and invited the solitary woman to join their table; a sacrifice that earned her nothing but ten shillings, and the stony-faced admission from Mrs. Smithton that she and the Barrs had parted ways, after she discovered in them evidence of the grossest ingratitude. She then fixed her attention solely on the game at hand, and not all of Mrs. Farris's friendly chatter and ingenuous remarks could elicit any other comment on the matter. A casual reference by Mrs. Farris to Mrs. Grayson, produced even less response—only a dull flush, a slight, inimical narrowing of Mrs. Smithton's eyes, and the cold observation that she had always understood the game to be called _Whist_ because the players were desired to maintain a certain measure of silence while it was in progress.

My faith in my allies has been greatly shaken, to find that some event can seriously discompose one who regularly frequents these rooms, and accomplish the unexpected disappearance of four other persons, and yet not one of my ladies has been able to discover anyone who has the slightest suspicion of what momentous occurrence may have brought this about. Have they no servants? Have they no household spies? How can any Mrs. Tiddle-Taddle who deserves the name be so deficient in information, just when it is most required? I begin to wonder if I have made a grave mistake, in entrusting the truth of my fragile condition to those who have thus proved themselves woefully inadequate to the task of knowing and telling all.

Yours in the utmost gloom, Ann Northcott

PS. You will please have your mother, when next she writes to Lady Thomasin, to warn that lady not to visit Bath this year. It is such a tiresome place, that the conviction has been growing upon me that England would be best served, were it to become the site of a Gothick Ruin, which one only visits briefly on a pic-nic in order to admire and sketch the picturesque nature of its fallen towers, and then moves on to more cheerful landscapes. Unfortunately, the only way I can think of to bring this about, is to send the French an invitation to invade it, with precise directions to all those main buildings, that I feel would most benefit from being turned into uninhabitable and owl-ridden heaps. You need not fear any lasting harm from my latest plan, however, for I mean at the same time to write to the Horse Guards, giving them the appointed date of the invasion, that they might repel The Corsican Monster and his minions before they are able to advance any further into the country. Indeed, I do not know that I require even the whole of Bath to be destroyed; I believe the ruination of the Crescent--which my mother is always commanding me to admire--and the public rooms, with their ubiquitous smirking portraits of past masters of the ceremonies, will leave me perfectly satisfied.

Chapter Fifteen

Letter No. 26

Thursday, 28th June

My Dear Julia,

Perhaps you will be gratified to know, that I have decided not to send for the French after all, as the reception of notes from both Mrs. Grayson and Miss Barr have persuaded me that, although Bath is still very tedious, there may be far stupider places in England, which I would like even less (and no doubt, if my mother's hopes for Bath are not fulfilled, she will next find some way to make me visit one of them).

As for the notes—which came together, Miss Barr's being sealed within the other—I would have had them yesterday, and saved myself many hours of ill-humor, if they had not been mistakenly placed in the collection of mail given to my mother, and she had not passed over them as being of no particular importance—the paper being of ordinary quality, and the seal uncrested—and only come to open the cover today, when she had no other correspondence to dispose of. She asserts that she never noticed that it was directed to me, and I suppose, since the only other letters I am accustomed to receive are your own, that this is not an unreasonable claim. In any event, she did not trouble to conceal the fact that she had continued to read Mrs. Grayson's note, even after her eye fell on the salutation addressed to Miss Northcott, for she asked me who Mrs. Overton Grayson might be, and when I reminded her that she already knew of my acquaintance with Mr. Grayson, and explained their relationship, she looked faintly alarmed, and went away frowning. No doubt she is now suspecting me of having developed a stupid _tendre_ for the gentleman, based upon this evidence that I have troubled to form an acquaintance with his aunt, and will occupy the rest of the day in attempting to discover if there is the slightest hope that he may have a set of strawberry leaves somewhere in his extended family. I am sure I wish her joy of a wasted afternoon. [Editor's Note: Strawberry leaves were associated with ducal coronets.]

Mrs. Grayson's note was a very simple one, her words filling less than one page, and yet when I laid it down I was smiling for what felt like the first time in days, and felt the faint stirrings of hope, that perhaps my exile here has served a greater purpose, than the one designed by my mother. She may have meant it for evil (or at least, to illustrate to me that there are unpleasant consequences to refusing to flirt with the heir to an earldom, when he fortuitously happens to be the good-natured cousin of one's best friend), but perhaps, after all, God meant it for good, just as my dear Julia keeps insisting, with wasplike tenacity.

Mrs. Grayson began by expressing her confidence that I would forgive her 'presumption' in initiating a correspondence, and explaining that she would not have done so, except that events had unexpectedly fallen out, that led to their precipitate departure from Bath, and she thought I deserved to know the fate of Mrs. Barr and her daughter, having taken so great an interest in their welfare.

It seems that the Graysons' offer to share their carriage with Mrs. Smithton and the Barrs, had the unintended effect of arousing in Mrs. Smithton's breast the suspicion—as far as I know, unfounded—that her hapless relations were plotting ways to escape from the trap of her beneficence. That evening she had summoned Mrs. Barr to a private interview, and there proceeded to accuse her of every variation of ingratitude and folly, in such an unreasonable manner, that Mrs. Barr feared her relative had taken leave of her senses. Mrs. Smithton evidently ended by promising to lay a charge of theft against Mrs. Barr, should she attempt to leave the household and 'disgrace the family name by throwing herself on the mercy of strangers.'

I could not help wondering how Mrs. Smithton's vaunted care for the family name could ever hope to survive one of its members being arrested and perhaps hanged for a thief, but Mrs. Barr apparently saw no reason to doubt the sincerity of the threat. Terrified and desperate, she nevertheless bided her time, and the next morning at first light, took her daughter and as many of their possessions as could be stuffed into a pair of band-boxes, and left Mrs. Smithton's, having no choice but to do exactly as she had forbidden, and trust to the mercy of strangers, since their own family members had proved to be singularly devoid of that quality.

Mrs. Grayson did not mention how she and her nephew may have responded to being rousted out at such an early hour in order to receive fugitives, but no one who has conversed with her for more than five minutes with an unprejudiced mind, can doubt that the Barrs were greeted with the utmost kindness. According to Mrs. Grayson, she was only too delighted to be able to welcome them into her household, having worried for days over the best way to approach the matter without giving offense. As for Mr. Grayson, his response to Mrs. Barr's account was to arrange for breakfast, and afterward to call on Mrs. Smithton in company with a stout footman, his aunt's maid, and a list of the Barrs' belongings which they had been forced to leave behind. While in Charles Street, he had spoken to The Benefactress to such effect, that he was afterward able to persuade Mrs. Barr that she need have no further fear of the woman's ire, or of her threats being carried out. Still, the Barrs' dread of meeting her again was so acute, that the Grayson had agreed that, rather than leave Bath for Northumberland on Friday, as had been their intention, they would instead expedite the preparations and depart the next day.

This was the main substance of her letter, though there were a few more lines concerned with her (needless) gratitude to me for bringing the Barr ladies to her attention, thus allowing her to be 'the Providential means by which they were liberated from a most dreadful situation.'

After this, you may suppose I opened Miss Barr's note with great eagerness—the seal attesting that my mother had not been curious enough to do so—and for once my expectations did not meet with disappointment, for though she told much the same tale in two crossed sides, she was far less discreet, and did not hesitate to record many details, that Mrs. Grayson had elected to pass over; or perhaps she may not have known them: I can well imagine, that Mrs. Barr may have been reluctant to confess to either of the Graysons some of Mrs. Smithton's wilder accusations, which she might have admitted to her daughter, in the first flurry of agitation.

Miss Barr was herself clearly still in an excited state when she penned her account to me, and both her legibility and her prose suffered, the latter from both repetition and exclamatory phrases. Shorn of these, however, the list of Mrs. Smithton's accusations is remarkably entertaining, from being both contradictory and absurd—your father would doubtless be pained by the deficiency of her logic, but I feel some credit must be given for the ingenuity of a mind that can simultaneously censure a woman for venality, credulity and immorality. And one cannot help but feel a certain admiration for the decisive way in which she cast the Graysons' reputations to the winds, in order to support her cause.

As far as I could establish them, Mrs. Smithton's main points were as follows:

1. Mrs. Barr had been telling odious lies about her benefactress, and impugning Mrs. Smithton's generosity to others;

2. Mrs. Barr had been shamelessly flirting with Mr. Grayson;

3. she had been encouraging her daughter to do the same;

4. she was attempting to deceive Mrs. Grayson into believing that she would be an excellent companion, soft-spoken and biddable, instead of a sly, ungrateful wretch who played cards with less skill than an Indian monkey;

5. Mrs. Grayson was attempting to lure her away, and if Mrs. Barr succumbed she would find herself and her daughter ensnared in a life of intolerable servitude;

6. Mr. Grayson was a wolf in sheep's clothing who preyed upon foolish women who had no one to protect them, and if Mrs. Barr believed his protestations of regard and left the safety of her relative's household, she would soon find herself destitute and despised etc, etc.

(I was amused to note, that Miss Barr's greatest indignation and horror, seemed almost to be reserved for the thought that she would ever have attempted to attract the notice of a gentleman as advanced in years as Mr. Grayson, even if her mother had encouraged such a thing.)

Aside from the vituperation of Mrs. Smithton, Miss Barr's letter contained about half a sheet extolling the kindness and generosity of the Graysons, and a few obligatory lines regretting the fact that, as they were shortly to leave for Northumberland, she was not likely ever to see her dear Miss Northcott again, though she would always remember me very gratefully, and treasure her _Evenings at Home_ until the day she died; she would, as well, be certain to read every one of those books I had recommended, of which she had kept a very careful list. I admit, I was absurdly pleased by her confession that, when first they left Mrs. Smithton's house, she had tried to persuade her mother to come to me for help, until Mrs. Barr had reminded her that I was ill. It is gratifying to know, that at least Miss Barr had faith in my goodwill, even if her mother (rightly) mistrusted my ability to act upon it. My illness made a convenient excuse, but I must suspect that my mother's well-known intolerance for presumption was the chief reason why Mrs. Barr chose to look elsewhere for sanctuary.

And so, my dear Julia, there it is—my little Bath play has had the _finis_ spoken over it, and all my characters are by now several counties away, and planning their lives without my assistance. The first swell of elation and relief has passed, and I now feel a gentle melancholy creeping over me at the realization that, while they may be gone, I am still held captive here by my mother's decree. I do not mean to sink into a decline, however, but will gird myself and go out tomorrow to greet my allies, and hobble about as determinedly as ever. Perhaps I will tell Mrs. Warren a very little of what occurred, not enough that the least breath of scandal will attach to anyone concerned, but only sufficient that she may rejoice with me that the Barr ladies have at last found freedom from the tyranny of Mrs. Smithton's card-table.

Yours, smiling a most immoderate and unChesterfieldian smile,

Ann Northcott

PS. I have just realized, Julia, that by my own persistence in the role of _dea ex machina_ , I have succeeded in removing from Bath the two persons whom I found the most pleasure in observing. My Siddons and Kemble are gone, and I am now left with nothing but the inferior features of secondary players. How, how could I have been so lacking in foresight?

Chapter Sixteen

Letter No. 29

Tuesday, 3rd July

My dear soon-to-be-seen Julia—

Yes, it is true—my gaoler is turning the key, and my prison door is about to be flung wide: we are leaving Bath and returning to Hellwick, just as soon as all our goods may be crammed into trunks and boxes, and ourselves stuffed into the carriage. Not even the prospect of a miserably uncomfortable journey in company with a parent in a state of high fury can dampen my spirits, for at the end of it there awaits for me all of my dear Parrys—Parries?—like Shining Ones at the gates of the Celestial City, ushering me in to eternal rest—or at least eternal in the sense that I believe it will be many, many years before my mother is again willing to risk her reputation by forcing me to accompany her anywhere outside the circle of our own Warwickshire friends, who are already well-aware that my flaws and eccentricities are due only to my own obstinacy.

You wonder how this miraculous release came about—I should make you wait until I arrive, but as I have already established that the wisest course right now is to stay as far away from my mother as possible, and as all my books have already been packed away, I have no other means of occupying myself save to write what I hope is my very last letter to Julia Parry for the rest of our lives. (I have mentioned, have I not, that when you eventually marry, I mean to come and live in a cottage nearby, and play the role of eccentric-but-beloved-spinster-aunt to all your offspring?)

It happened in this wise: Unbeknownst to me, ever since my mother had become aware of my acquaintance with Mrs. Grayson, she had quietly made it her business to discover what she could of the family, apparently no longer trusting in the integrity of my own report on the subject; though how she fancied any man could be a danger to her ambitions for me, when he was busy voluntarily removing himself across the country, is beyond my comprehension. In any event, my mother's inquiries bore entirely unexpected fruit—as if she had shaken a pear tree, and a pineapple had fallen onto her head—for she ultimately found herself in conversation with a lady of some consequence, who was familiar with the Northumberland Graysons for many generations past. The intelligence thus gained gave my mother furiously to think, and brought about a frank interrogation of myself just yesterday, concerning both my encounters with the Graysons, and the present relation in which they stood with Mrs. Barr and her daughter. Since she had already a very good notion of how matters stood with the Barrs, having read Mrs. Grayson's letter, I thought it would be foolish to conceal anything but my useless attempts at matchmaking for Miss Barr, and the precise details of Mrs. Smithton's accusations in that extraordinary tirade. As I had then no idea of my mother's new knowledge concerning the Graysons, or of the direction her thoughts had taken, I was briefly mystified by the ill-humor that settled over her at the end of our exchange; but as it is by no means a new thing for her to respond to my conversation thus, I easily dismissed it once we reached the house; and as she dined with friends, and I remained at home with the remnants of my cough, I quickly forgot the whole matter.

This morning I was reminded of it, of course; but the concentrated nature of her ill-temper had passed, leaving behind the more stoic disappointment that I was accustomed to observe in her whenever I had displayed in some fresh way my unsuitability to be Helen Northcott's daughter. We separated upon reaching the rooms as usual, and the morning progressed in the customary way, until I looked up from chatting with Mrs. Warren and Mrs. Belmar, to discover my mother bearing down upon me like the _Speedy_ upon a hapless enemy gunboat. A few words summoned me from my companions, and, much bewildered, I soon found myself standing in the portico beside the personification of maternal displeasure. At a genuine loss as to how I might have provoked this particular manifestation of it, it seemed to me best to remain silent until she chose to explain it to me. As it happened, I had longer to wait than I had supposed, for her lips remained tightly compressed until we were returned to the house and she had swept into the drawingroom without even turning her head to be certain I followed. As I did so, I felt renewed pity for Mrs. Barr, who had similarly followed in the wake of an outraged relative, and had not, as I do, the comfort of knowing that even if for some reason my father and my mother cast me off, then the Parrys would take me up.

Do you wish for a recital of all my sins? Never mind if you do; it would be even more tiresome to me to enumerate them, as it was to listen to them. They encompassed my habitual transgressions—undutifulness, ingratitude, perversity, intractability, inconstant curls, failing to be born a son—and only after about twenty minutes grew particular enough to catch my interest, for she began to abuse my stupidity in regard to Mr. Grayson, who was, she had learned, not a lowly Cantab at all—or not only a Cantab—but also the sole heir to his uncle Harold Overton Grayson, who had owned the upper half of England, all the mines in Newcastle and Borrowdale, and probably the crown jewels as well, since no doubt the Prince of Wales has had them secretly sold and replaced with paste copies in order to settle his debts. What? You think I exaggerate the matter? Perhaps. I do, however, know that the extent of my folly was truly enormous: I had been in his company, by my own confession, at least three times, and still it had been left for some whey-faced widow to have the wit to insinuate herself and her pathetic daughter into his life and now they had all gone off together and she would undoubtedly have the fellow saying vows by Michaelmas. Mrs. Barr, unlike other persons present in the room whom my mother could not bring herself to mention by name, had plainly embraced the truth that the affections of most gentlemen can be infallibly stirred up by an appeal to their chivalry, and a subtle implication that a pretty young woman stands in need of their aid and protection. Mrs. Barr, my mother was sure, would not fail to continue to display the most appealing show of weakness, until Mr. Grayson was firmly caught.

Now, I was tolerably certain that poor Mrs. Barr had had no more notion of the Graysons' true circumstances than I did; moreover, as I felt moved to point out, she had approached the aunt for help, not the nephew, and what Mrs. Grayson possessed was compassion for those truly in distress, not mindless chivalric instincts. My defense did not precisely fall on deaf ears, but my mother returned me a look that intimated I had just shattered her last lingering hope that my brainbox contained anything but a few pebbles rolling about in it. 'Mrs. Barr's very flight had condemned her: she knew where to find the Graysons, that they resided in the Crescent, ergo, like any woman with a grain of sense, she would have deduced the existence of considerable wealth. As for the aunt's vaunted compassion, my mother's source of intelligence had made it very clear that Mrs. Grayson thought so highly of her nephew, that she refused to move hand or foot without his approval, and would certainly have turned away such a useless pair if he had commanded it.' I thought my mother's Northumberland gossip had a very poor notion of the affectionate regard that seemed to exist between the two Graysons, but by this time I had recovered from the irrational fit that had prompted me to try to defend Mrs. Barr, and retired into my more usual silence.

The longer my mother spoke, however, the more I began to wonder why, if she had learned of the Graysons' resplendent fortune yesterday, it had taken her four-and-twenty hours to grow so enraged at the depth of my folly. I do not deny that bitterness is only too happy to continually double its size with only the slightest encouragement, but though a rich Daughter Grayson must be more acceptable to her than a Spinster Daughter, base coin is not the same as a title; nor has my mother ever been an admirer of those women possessed of sons-in-law whose wrinkles keep pace with their own. Reflecting on these inconsistencies, I thoughtlessly lowered myself into the chair that I had been standing beside, and was startled when my action at once halted my mother in mid-declamation, so that she could glare at me afresh. That was when the nature of my most egregious offense against her began to be revealed: All these weeks I had been limping about the assembly rooms, leaning on the arms of garrulous old busy-bodies, and making no attempt to improve my appearance, but rather sitting around pretending to sip the dreadful waters and looking wistful, as if I were a true invalid instead of an artful, self-willed girl with a minor injury that was entirely due to my own foolishness and a propensity for catching colds which she was not at all certain was not deliberate, etc, etc. Somewhere in the midst of these interesting animadversions on my character, I learned not only why she was so infuriated, but why, eventually, she saw no other recourse, than for us to return immediately to Hellwick.

But I must end my letter to you here, for I have several other notes I must write as well before we depart. You, I will see in but a few days, d.v.—but I may never again see my solicitous old ladies, and for their efforts on my behalf they deserve every token of gratitude and respect I can pay them. What faithful allies they turned out to be, after all! I am ashamed of the many times I despaired of them, when their circumspection seemed almost specifically designed to thwart my most cherished, De Retzian plan. I will send farewell letters to all of them, though of course I cannot openly thank them for their most valuable service, which was their persistence in praising the _sang-froid_ of Mrs. Northcott, and commending the fortitude and grace with which she endured the trial of having such a sickly daughter as her only child. I only wish it were similarly possible to send a note expressing my gratitude to that gloriously ill-natured matron, whoever she might be, who failed to sufficiently lower her voice as she described my mother to Lady So-and-so not as "Mrs. Northcott of Hellwick Hall," but as "the mother of that poor girl, _you know_ , the crippled one."

Triumphantly yours,

Ann Northcott

PS. Upon consideration, I anticipate a very quiet journey home, for surely my mother has emptied her budget of insults against me, and who else is there to blame for this sad debacle? She will take what comfort she can from Lord Chesterfield, while I celebrate my impending freedom with some nonsensical trifle. _The Rivals_ would be apposite enough, for one departing Bath; but perhaps it should be _Love à la Mode_. On that head, I confess I never once thought of casting Mrs. Barr in the role of heroine, though I do not say I am entirely against it. I suppose, if he now owns half of England, Mr. Grayson can very well afford to give up his fellowship for a wife, without there being any danger that he will afterward be forced to appear in an inferior coat.

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To the kind reader who has perservered to the end:

If you wish to discover if Mrs. Northcott was indeed ready to concede defeat and allow her daughter to lead a quite and peaceable life with her friends, look for the continuation of Ann and Julia's story in _Friendship and Folly: The Merriweather Chronicles, Book One_ , now available in print and as an ebook.
