Page:Maria Edgeworth (Zimmern 1883).djvu/121

Rh the last page! And the pleasure came upon us so unexpectedly — we had been so completely absorbed, that every thought of ourselves, of our own authorship, was far, far away. I thank you for the honour you have done us, and for the pleasure you have given us, great in proportion to the opinion we had formed of the work we had just perused, and, believe me, every opinion I have in this letter expressed, was formed before any individual in the family had peeped to the end of the book, or knew how much we owed you. Your obliged and grateful

To this letter Ballantyne replied; thus, even towards Miss Edgeworth, Scott kept up his anonymity. A little later she tells a friend:—"Scott says upon his honour that he had nothing to do with Guy Mannering, though he had a little to do, he says, with Waverley."

The following winter was spent by the family at Dublin, for the sake of first-class medical advice for Mr. Edgeworth. That indefatigable, active-minded old man meantime, though far from well, made experiments on wheel carriages, and published a report. There was much gaiety and some interesting society to enliven the winter, but nothing worthy of note is recorded by Miss Edgeworth. Anxiety on account of her beloved father was uppermost in her mind, yet she continued to write, and was busy upon some plays and upon preparing a third edition of Patronage. In this third edition she made some important alterations, changing the dénouement to gratify remonstrances that bad reached her. She did not like this alteration, and doubted the propriety of making it after a work had gone through two editions. Her father, however, approved, and the public was more satisfied. There was certainly much that was unnatural in the previous course of the tale, in which the newly-married wife refuses to