BARCHESTER TOWERS
cise over her father, and on this account had been unwilling to allow the archdeacon's wife to exercise authority over herself.
"You got a note just before dinner, I believe," began the eldest sister.
Eleanor acknowledged that she had done so, and felt that she turned red as she acknowledged it. She would have given anything to have kept her colour, but the more she tried to do so the more signally she failed.
"Was it not from Mr. Slope?"
Eleanor said that the letter was from Mr. Slope.
"Is he a regular correspondent of yours, Eleanor?"
"Not exactly," said she, already beginning to feel angry at the cross-examination. She determined, and why it would be difficult to say, that nothing should induce her to tell her sister Susan what was the subject of the letter. Mrs. Grantly, she knew, was instigated by the archdeacon, and she would not plead to any arraignment made against her by him.
"But, Eleanor, dear, why do you get letters from Mr. Slope at all, knowing, as you do, he is a person so distasteful to papa, and to the archdeacon, and indeed to all your friends?"
"In the first place, Susan, I don't get letters from him; and in the next place, as Mr. Slope wrote the one letter which I have got, and as I only received it, which I could not very well help doing, as papa handed it to me, I think you had better ask Mr. Slope instead of me."
"What was his letter about, Eleanor?"
"I cannot tell you," said she, "because it was confidential. It was on business respecting a third person."
"It was in no way personal to yourself, then?"
"I won't exactly say that, Susan," said she, getting more and more angry at her sister's questions.
"Well, I must say it's rather singular," said Mrs. Grantly, affecting to laugh, "that a young lady in your position should receive a letter from an unmarried gentleman of which she will not tell the contents, and which she is ashamed to show to her sister."
"I am not ashamed," said Eleanor, blazing up; "I am not
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