One half of her letter was a mere guide-book to the Roman
antiquities, and was broken off short for some carnival gaiety. Lord
Erymanth clearly liked his letters as little as we did. In the
abstract, in spite of the first cousinship, I am afraid he would
rather have given Viola to Pigou St. Glear than to Harold Alison, but
he had thought better of his niece than to think she could forget
such a man so soon.
However, the day came. Dora slept with me, and that last night when
I came to bed, I found the true self had made a reassertion in one of
those frightful fits of dumb hysteria. Half the night Colman and I
were attending to her, but still she never opened to me, more than by
clinging frantically round my neck in the intervals. She fell asleep
at last, and slept till we actually pulled her out of bed to be
dressed for the wedding; but we agreed that we could not expose our
uncle (who was to escort her to Northchester station) to being left
alone with her in one of these attacks, and, as our programme had
never been quite fixed, we altered it so far as to pass through
Northchester and see her safe into Baby Horsman's hands.
She was altogether herself by day, gave no sign of emotion, and was
as merry as possible throughout the journey, calling out to Dermot
airily from the platform that she should send him a present of sour
krout from Baden.
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