Page:Lady Anne Granard, or Keeping up Appearances Volume 2.pdf/14

12 disease, was capable of the renovation peculiar to youth; and the letter was an able physician, and might soon have effected a cure, if this new trouble had not arisen. Their first immediate care was how to dispose of it. Georgiana could not have destroyed it even if she had had the means; but she felt that hidden it must be, for all their sakes; the possession of a document clandestinely obtained, which, although considerately written, indirectly blamed her mother, and was in direct opposition to her wishes in the point where she claimed obedience, was, in their eyes, a kind of immorality, which was made much worse now she was known to be in trouble. Helen took charge of it in the first place, as being much the less likely to be suspected and examined; but hard indeed did the beloved and reassured one feel the necessity to part with the sweetest treasure she had ever possessed, and which she wished to place next her heart, and hold there till it had throbbed its last. No young person of either sex, who ever pressed to their lips, for the first time, "the one loved name," inscribed on that sheet which has revealed the softest, sweetest fears, hopes, and tender solicitudes of the heart (in those days of early life when its feelings and wishes are new, undefined, but yet powerful and profound) will fail to sympathise with poor Georgiana. The letter had raised her from death to life, from despair to hope; it had given her confidence, not only