The Queen of Hearts | Page 8

opportunity, contrived to see her, now
at her aunt's house, and now at Mr. Yelverton's. The particulars of her
character and conduct, which I gleaned in this way, more than sufficed
to convince me that the poor major's plan for the careful training of his
daughter's disposition, though plausible enough in theory, was little
better than a total failure in practice. Miss Jessie, to use the expressive
common phrase, took after her aunt. She was as generous, as impulsive,
as light-hearted, as fond of change, and gayety, and fine clothes--in
short, as complete and genuine a woman as Lady Westwick herself. It
was impossible to reform the "Queen of Hearts," and equally
impossible not to love her. Such, in few words, was my
fellow-guardian's report of his experience of our handsome young
ward.
So the time passed till the year came of which I am now writing--the
ever-memorable year, to England, of the Russian war. It happened that
I had heard less than usual at this period, and indeed for many months
before it, of Jessie and her proceedings. My son had been ordered out
with his regiment to the Crimea in 1854, and had other work in hand
now than recording the sayings and doings of a young lady. Mr.
Richard Yelverton, who had been hitherto used to write to me with
tolerable regularity, seemed now, for some reason that I could not
conjecture, to have forgotten my existence. Ultimately I was reminded
of my ward by one of George's own letters, in which he asked for news
of her; and I wrote at once to Mr. Yelverton. The answer that reached
me was written by his wife: he was dangerously ill. The next letter that
came informed me of his death. This happened early in the spring of
the year 1855.
I am ashamed to confess it, but the change in my own position was the
first idea that crossed my mind when I read the news of Mr. Yelverton's
death. I was now left sole guardian, and Jessie Yelverton wanted a year
still of coming of age.
By the next day's post I wrote to her about the altered state of the
relations between us. She was then on the Continent with her aunt,

having gone abroad at the very beginning of the year. Consequently, so
far as eighteen hundred and fifty-five was concerned, the condition
exacted by the will yet remained to be performed. She had still six
weeks to pass--her last six weeks, seeing that she was now twenty years
old--under the roof of one of her guardians, and I was now the only
guardian left.
In due course of time I received my answer, written on rose-colored
paper, and expressed throughout in a tone of light, easy, feminine
banter, which amused me in spite of myself. Miss Jessie, according to
her own account, was hesitating, on receipt of my letter, between two
alternatives--the one, of allowing herself to be buried six weeks in The
Glen Tower; the other, of breaking the condition, giving up the money,
and remaining magnanimously contented with nothing but a
life-interest in her father's property. At present she inclined decidedly
toward giving up the money and escaping the clutches of "the three
horrid old men;" but she would let me know again if she happened to
change her mind. And so, with best love, she would beg to remain
always affectionately mine, as long as she was well out of my reach.
The summer passed, the autumn came, and I never heard from her
again. Under ordinary circumstances, this long silence might have
made me feel a little uneasy. But news reached me about this time from
the Crimea that my son was wounded--not dangerously, thank God, but
still severely enough to be la id up--and all my anxieties were now
centered in that direction. By the beginning of September, however, I
got better accounts of him, and my mind was made easy enough to let
me think of Jessie again. Just as I was considering the necessity of
writing once more to my refractory ward, a second letter arrived from
her. She had returned at last from abroad, had suddenly changed her
mind, suddenly grown sick of society, suddenly become enamored of
the pleasures of retirement, and suddenly found out that the three horrid
old men were three dear old men, and that six weeks' solitude at The
Glen Tower was the luxury, of all others, that she languished for most.
As a necessary result of this altered state of things, she would therefore
now propose to spend her allotted six weeks with her guardian. We
might certainly expect her on the twentieth of September, and she

would take the greatest care to fit herself for our society by arriving in