She knew her own powers, and was aware that
Lord Rufford was fond of feminine beauty and feminine flutter and
feminine flattery, though he was not prepared to marry. It was
quite possible that she might be able to dig such a pit for him
that it would be easier for him to marry her than to get out in any
other way. Of course she must trust something to his own folly
at first. Nor did she trust in vain. Before her week was over
at Mrs. Gore's she received from him a letter, which, with the
correspondence to which it immediately led, shall be given in this
chapter.
Letter No. I.
Rufford, Sunday.
My Dear Miss Trefoil,
We have had a sad house since you left us. Poor Caneback got better
and then worse and then better,--and at last died yesterday
afternoon. And now; there is to be the funeral! The poor dear old
boy seems to have had nobody belonging to him and very little in
the way of possessions. I never knew anything of him except that he
was, or had been, in the Blues, and that he was about the best man
in England to hounds on a bad horse. It now turns out that his
father made some money in India,--a sort of Commissary purveyor,--
and bought a commission for him twenty-five years ago. Everybody
knew him but nobody knew anything about, him. Poor old Caneback! I
wish he had managed to die anywhere else and I don't feel at all
obliged to Purefoy for sending that brute of a mare here.
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