your attachment to proceed without ascertaining how far it had yet
extended. I was awakened to a sense of my indiscretion by an inquiry
which Mr. Linden's popularity rendered general; namely, if Mr. Talbot
was his uncle, who was his father? who his more immediate relations?
and at that time Lord Borodaile informed us of the falsehood he had
either asserted or allowed to be spread in claiming Mr. Talbot as his
relation. This you will observe entirely altered the situation of Mr.
Linden with respect to you. Not only his rank in life became
uncertain, but suspicious. Nor was this all: his very personal
respectability was no longer unimpeachable. Was this dubious and
intrusive person, without a name and with a sullied honour, to be your
suitor? No, Flora; and it was from this indignant conviction that I
spoke to you some days since. Forgive me, my child, if I was less
cautious, less confidential than I am now. I did not imagine the
wound was so deep, and thought that I should best cure you by seeming
unconscious of your danger. The case is now changed; your illness has
convinced me of my fault, and the extent of your unhappy attachment:
but will my own dear child pardon me if I still continue, if I even
confirm, my disapproval of her choice? Last night at the Opera Mr.
Linden entered my box. I own that I was cooler to him than usual. He
soon left us, and after the Opera I saw him with the Duke of
Haverfield, one of the most incorrigible roues of the day, leading out
a woman of notoriously bad character and of the most ostentatious
profligacy. He might have had some propriety, some decency, some
concealment at least, but he passed just before me,--before the mother
of the woman to whom his vows of honourable attachment were due and
who at that very instant was suffering from her infatuation for him.
Now, Flora, for this man, an obscure and possibly a plebeian
adventurer, whose only claim to notice has been founded on falsehood,
whose only merit, a love of you, has been, if not utterly destroyed,