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"Poor darling! she seee--five and twenty," returned Rachel "Well I shall go and ask

about the house Re no trouble or

care on you; Fanny Tee from henceforth My mission has

coer excitement

of affection, emotion, and importance, for Fanny had been more like a

sister than a cousin

Grace and Rachel Curtis were the daughters of the squire of the

Homestead; Fanny, of his brother, an officer in the arirl had spent her life, from her seventh to

her sixteenth year, as absolutely one with her cousins, until she was

summoned to meet her father at the Cape, under the escort of his old

friend, General Sir Stephen Te

under fatal disease, and while his relations were preparing to receive,

alhter, they were electrified by the

tidings that the gentle little Fanny, at sixteen, had become the wife of

Sir Stephen Temple, at sixty

From that time little had been known about her; her mother had continued

with her, but the two Mrs Curtises had never been congenial or

inti correspondent, feeling

perhaps the difficulty of writing under changed circumstances Her

husband had been in various coland; and all that was known of her was a general impression that

she had much ill-health and numerous children, and was tended like an

infant by her bustlinghusband More than half a year

back, tidings had come of the almost sudden death of her mother; and

about three months subsequently, one of the officers of Sir Stephen's