the stage, or an unreasonable woman off it. I have the greatest sympathy
and admiration for your true heroine in a book; but I grant you, that in
real life, in a private room, the tragedy queen would be too much for me;
and the novel heroine would be the most useless, troublesome, affected,
haranguing, egotistical, insufferable being imaginable! So, my dear
Caroline, I am content, that you are my sister, and my friend, though I
give you up as a heroine."




CHAPTER VII.


LETTER FROM GODFREY PERCY TO MRS. PERCY.

"London, the British Hotel.

"You will be surprised, my dear mother, to find that I am in London,
instead of being, as I had hoped I should have been by this time,
with the army on the continent. Just as we were going to embark, we
were countermanded, and ordered to stay at our quarters. Conceive our
disappointment--to remain in garrison at the most stupid, idle country
town in England.

"You ask how I like my brother officers, and what sort of men they
are?--Major Gascoigne, son to my father's friend, I like extremely; he is a
man of a liberal spirit, much information, and zeal for the army. But what
I particularly admire in him is his candour. He says it is his own fault
that he is not higher in the army--that when he was a very young man, he