The Heart of Mid-Lothian - Penn State University

hand, though something stiff and constrained—the
spelling and the diction that of a person who had been
accustomed to read good composition, and mix in good
society.
The tenor of the letter was as follows:—
“My Dearest Sister,—At many risks I venture to write
to you, to inform you that I am still alive, and, as to
worldly situation, that I rank higher than I could expect
or merit. If wealth, and distinction, and an
honourable rank, could make a woman happy, I have
them all; but you, Jeanie, whom the world might think
placed far beneath me in all these respects, are far happier
than I am. I have had means of hearing of your
welfare, my dearest Jeanie, from time to time—I think
I should have broken my heart otherwise. I have learned
with great pleasure of your increasing family. We have
not been worthy of such a blessing; two infants have
been successively removed, and we are now childless—
God’s will be done! But, if we had a child, it would perhaps
divert him from the gloomy thoughts which make
Sir Walter Scott
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him terrible to himself and others. Yet do not let me
frighten you, Jeanie; he continues to be kind, and I am
far better off than I deserve. You will wonder at my
better scholarship; but when I was abroad, I had the
best teachers, and I worked hard, because my progress
pleased him. He is kind, Jeanie, only he has much to
distress him, especially when he looks backward. When
I look backward myself, I have always a ray of comfort:
it is in the generous conduct of a sister, who forsook me
not when I was forsaken by every one. You have had
your reward. You live happy in the esteem and love of
all who know you, and I drag on the life of a miserable
impostor, indebted for the marks of regard I receive to
a tissue of deceit and lies, which the slightest accident
may unravel. He has produced me to his friends, since
the estate opened to him, as a daughter of a Scotchman
of rank, banished on account of the Viscount of
Dundee’s wars—that is, our Fr’s old friend Clavers, you
know—and he says I was educated in a Scotch convent;
indeed, I lived in such a place long enough to enable me
to support the character. But when a countryman ap-