l, had such charms for me, that I preferred listening to, and sharing in it, to doing anything else. St. John did not rebuke our vivacity; but he escaped from it: he was seldom in the house; his parish was large, the population scattered, and he found daily business in visiting the sick and poor in its different districts.
One morning at breakfast, Diana, after looking a little pensive for some minutes, asked him, 'If his plans were yet unchanged.'
'Unchanged and unchangeable,' was the reply. And he proceeded to inform us that his departure from England was now definitely fixed for the ensuing year.
'And Rosamond Oliver?' suggested Mary, the words seeming to escape her lips involuntarily: for no sooner had she uttered them, than she made a gesture as if wishing to recall them. St. John had a book in his hand- it was his unsocial custom to read at meals- he closed it, and looked up.
'Rosamond Oliver,' said he, 'is about to be married to Mr. Granby, one of the best connected and most estimable residents in from her father yesterday.'
His sisters looked at each other and at me; we all three looked at him: he was serene as glass.
'The match must have been got up hastily,' said Diana: 'they cannot have known each other long.'
But where there are no obstacles to a union, as in the present case, where the connection is in every point desirable, delays are Frederic gives up to them, can be refitted for their reception.'
The first time I found St. John alone after this communication, I felt tempted to inquire if the event distressed him: but he seemed so little to need sympathy, that, so far from venturing to offer him more, I experienced some shame at the recollection of what I had already hazarded. Besides, I was out of practice in talking to him: his reserve was again frozen over, and my frankness was congealed beneath it. He had not kept his promise of treating me like his sisters; he continually made little, chilling differences between us, which did not at all tend to
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