Page:The Semi-detached House.djvu/74

 "Lord Chester, of course," said Blanche, laughing, "I ought to have called him so, I suppose. You see, Mrs. Hopkinson, he was sent off quite suddenly on that tiresome mission to Berlin, and we had never been parted for an hour, and I thought I should die while he was away, or that he would die while I was away. In short, my aunt says I am full of fancies; but you don't know how dreadfully lonely I feel without Arthur!"

"Don't I, my dear?" said Mrs. Hopkinson, quite warming up to the subject, and forgetting what she called her company manners, "why John has been away the best part of every year since we married, I am sure I might have been a widow twenty times over for all the good I have of his company! I have got used to it now; but the first time that he went, just after I was confined of Janet, I thought he would be lost at sea every time the wind blew, and the wind did nothing but blow that year, though when John came back he said it was all my fancy, and that he had made a remarkably smooth passage."