Love's Labour Won Author:James Grant Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. THE TROUBLES OF MELANIE. With the memory of a most frigid kiss and many words of warning and reprehension from Aunt Chillington, Melanie Talbo... more »t found herself alone in a second-class carriage—for already the declension of her beauty had begun—and travelling homeward, on the Oxford line, between those fertile meadows and pastures which, says Gibson, in his continuation of Camden, are ' the greatest glory' of the county, and are watered by almost innumerable crystal streamlets, the tributaries of the Isis or Thames. A soft smile overspread the girl's sweet face as she read and re-read, in the luxury of being alone and unnoticed, a letter received from her lover just before leaving Chillington Park. Among many other things that chiefly concerned themselves, nearly and dearly, he mentioned :—' I was told this evening by Hilda Tremayne' ('he calls her "Hilda!"' thought Melanie), 'the most atrocious flirt that exists' ('Oh, that accounts for it. Won't I punish him !') ' that she met you at your aunt's; but said you scarcely knew me, darling. Good, that—but wisely cautious of you with her. A storm is brewing in Burmah, and I hear that " ours " will be about the first corps detailed for service there; and it will only be " a flash in the pan," as our fathers used to say. In a day or two I am going with Musgrave, of the Hussars, to visit an old relation of his, somewhere in the country. I understand your uncle Grimshaw has shifted his camp to a new quarter. Let me know where, when you write me to the " Roy," and your letter will be forwarded.' Melanie kissed his letter ere she finally consigned it to the bosom of her dress ; but she could not then foresee how much trouble this shifting of her uncle's ' camp,' as Montague phrased it, would bring about. Aunt Chi...« less