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"Don't you consider Fairlegh to be looking very thin and pale, Miss Saville?" inquires Coleman, when we join the ladies after dinner, speaking with such an air of such genuine solicitude, that any one not intimately acquainted with him must surely imagine him in earnest. Miss Saville, completely taken in, answers innocently, "Indeed, I have thought Mr. Fairlegh much altered since I had the pleasure of meeting him before." Then, glancing my way with a look of unfeigned interest, which sends the blood bounding through my veins, she continues, "You have not been ill, I hope?" I hasten to reply in the negative, and to enlighten her as to the real cause of my pale looks, when Coleman interrupts me by exclaiming, "Ah! poor fellow, it is a melancholy affair. In those pale cheeks, that wasted though still graceful form, and the weak, languid, and unhappy, but deeply interesting tout ensemble, you perceive the sad results of -- am I at liberty to mention it? -- of an unfortunate attachment."
I nearly knock him flat, for that! Yet soon enough I am the one beholding the pale cheeks and surprised expression -- and on the face of that very Miss Clara Saville. But just what is in that mysterious letter that shocks her so?
About the author
Francis Edward Smedley (1818 - 1864) was an English novelist. His name appears in print usually as Frank E. Smedley. He was born with deformed feet, a disability that impaired his mobility and prevented him from attending regular school. Instead he was privately educated by his uncle. His cousin, the poet Menella Bute Smedley, later kept house for him and acted as his secretary. Smedley died in London in 1864. Smedley contributed his first book, Scenes from the Life of a Private Pupil, anonymously to Sharpe's London Magazine in 1846-1848. His first essay proved so successful that it was expanded into Frank Fairlegh, and published in book-form in 1850. His next book Lewis Arundel or The Railroad of Life was originally contributed to the same magazine, which he for some time edited and was published in book-form in 1852. Of his other writings the best-known is Harry Coverdale's Courtship (1855). These stories are racily told.
