"With that view, I left my letters at Government House, at Mr.
Clarkson's, Colonel Bunting's, Mrs. Castleton's, and elsewhere,
according to direction; and immediately found answer in a crowd of
invitations. I need not vex you nor myself, Emmy, writing as I do with a
heavy, heavy heart, by describing gayeties in which I felt no pleasure,
even when amongst them, for my Emmy was not there: splendour,
prodigality, and red-hot rooms, only made endurable by perpetually
fanning punkahs: pompous counsellors, authorities, and other men in
office, and a glut of military uniforms: vulgar wealth, transparent
match-making, and predominating dullness: along with some few of the
charities and kindnesses of life (Mrs. Bunting, in particular, is an
amiable, motherly, good-hearted woman), all these you will readily fancy
for yourself.
"My trouble is deeper than any thing so slight as the common satiations
of _ennui_: for I have heard in these circles in which your--my--the
general, I mean, chiefly mixed, so much of that ill-rumour that it
cannot all be false: they knew it all, and were certain of it all, too
well, Emily, dear. And I have been pestering Nurse Mackie night and day;
but the old woman is so afraid of being left behind any where, or thrown
overboard, or dropped, upon some desert rock, that she is quite cross,
and won't say a single word in answer, even when I tell her all these
terrible tales.
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