“Your attendance upon her has been too much for you.You do not look well.Oh that I had been with you!You have had every care and anxiety upon yourself alone.”
“Your affectionate friend,
“But not before they went to Brighton?”
She then proceeded to inquire into the measures which her father had intended to pursue,while in town,for the recovery of his daughter.
“But to expose the former faults of any person without knowing what their present feelings were,seemed unjustifiable.We acted with the best intentions.”
“He brought it with him for us to see.”
“Could Colonel Forster repeat the particulars of Lydia's note to his wife?”
“I do not know.I hope there was.But to be guarded at such a time is very difficult.My mother was in hysterics,and though I endeavoured to give her every assistance in my power,I am afraid I did not do so much as I might have done! But the horror of what might possibly happen almost took from me my faculties.”
“LYDIA BENNET.”
“He meant I believe,”replied Jane,“to go to Epsom,the place where they last changed horses, see the postilions and try if anything could be made out from them.His principal object must be to discover the number of the hackney coach which took them from Clapham.It had come with a fare from London;and as he thought that the circumstance of a gentleman and lady's removing from one carriage into another might be remarked he meant to make inquiries at Clapham.If he could anyhow discover at what house the coachman had before set down his fare,he determined to make inquiries there,and hoped it might not be impossible to find out the stand and number of the coach.I do not know of any other designs that he had formed;but he was in such a hurry to be gone,and his spirits so greatly discomposed,that I had difficulty in finding out even so much as this.”