Such openness of disposition, so often found among people of Mrs.
Anderson's class, is very refreshing, and it is convenient too. You know
at once where you stand. I wish it were the custom in society. I should
then have learned from Catherine's own lips how many fellows she had
already sent to the right-about, and I should have given her no
opportunity of adding to their number.
I came down very late to breakfast this morning--my first breakfast in
the country is always luxuriously late--and I found a tall and pretty
young girl busy building up the fire in my sitting-room. I guessed at
once she was the "Annie" of whom I heard a long and pleasing account
last night. Annie is the image of what her mother must have been twenty
years ago. She has the same agreeable blue eyes, the same soft straw
coloured hair. But while Mrs. Anderson wears hers in bands at each side
of the head, Annie's is drawn straight back to display the smoothest of
white foreheads, the freshest of freckled little faces in the world. She
is about seventeen, and a sweet girl, I feel sure. Could no more play
with a man's feelings than she could torture one of the creatures
committed to her care.
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