One winter they went to Nassau, the next to
the south of France: from both places she wrote such despairing letters
that my poor old father and mother were nearly beside themselves. It
was like the explosion of a bomb-shell in the household when a letter
came from Virginia. Sometimes I used to read and suppress them: they
were filled with shrieks and lamentations. Harry was in a rapid
decline; the mental torture was more than she could bear; some one must
come immediately out to her, etc. The first winter my eldest brother
went, to the serious injury of his business: he is a lawyer. I went
when they were in Europe, my wound not yet healed. By George! Harry
looked in better health than I: every one thought I was the invalid.
The doctor was called in immediately, who said I had endangered my life
by the expedition. I found out my lady had been to balls and on
excursions all the time she was writing those harrowing letters."
"Is it possible," said Miss Featherstone, "that you think Mrs. Pinckney
is false--that she deliberately tells untruths?"
"Not a bit of it," interrupted Colonel Pinckney. "She loves to complain
and make herself an object of sympathy.
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