She wrote to Mr. Carnegie, and enclosed the letter for his opinion. Mr.
Carnegie respected her confidence, and told her that from the name of
the physician mentioned by Christie as in attendance on his patient he
was in the best possible hands. She confessed to Harry what she had
done, and he found no fault with her, but his next letter was in a vein
of melancholy humor from beginning to end. He was going back, he said,
to his dismal chambers, his law-books and his scribbling, and she was to
send him a very bright letter indeed to cheer him in his solitude. How
Bessie wished she could have flown herself to cheer him! And now, too,
she half regretted her poverty under her grandfather's will, that
deferred all hope of his rescue from London smoke and toil till he had
made the means of rescue for himself. But she gave him the pleasure of
knowing what she would do if she could.
Thus the summer months lapsed away. There was no hiatus in their
correspondence again, but Harry told her that he had a constant fever on
him and was longing for home and rest. Once he wrote from Richmond,
whither he had gone with Christie, "The best fellow in the
universe--love him, dear Bessie, for my sake"--and once he spoke of
going to Italy for the winter, and of newspaper letters that were to pay
the shot. He was sad, humorous, tender by turns, but Bessie missed
something. There were allusions to the vanity of man's life and joy, now
and then there was a word of philosophy for future consolation, but of
present hope there was nothing.
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