Papa offers to go to Ramsgate for a fortnight, but he looks so wretched when he makes the offer, that I shall not have the heart to hold him to it.

Lady Macleod very much wants me to go to Cheltenham.

I very much want not to go, simply because I can never agree with her about anything; but it will probably end in my going there for a week or two.
Over and beyond that, I have no prospects before Christmas which are not purely domestic.

There is a project that we shall all eat our Christmas dinner at Vavasor Hall,--of course not including George,--but this project is quite in the clouds, and, as far as I am concerned, will remain there.
Dear John, let me hear that this letter does not make you unhappy.
Most affectionately yours, ALICE VAVASOR.
At Nethercoats, the post was brought in at breakfast-time, and Mr Grey was sitting with his tea and eggs before him, when he read Alice's letter.

He read it twice before he began to think what he would do in regard to it, and then referred to one or two others which he had received from Switzerland,--reading them also very carefully.