“Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage, blow,
  You cataracts and hurricanes!”

It is thus that a man is apt to address the soft rains of heaven when he is becoming wet through in such a frame of mind; and on the present occasion Harry likened himself to Leer.  It was to him as though the steeples were to be drenched and the cocks drowned when he found himself wet through.  In this condition he went back to the house, and so bitter to him were the misfortunes of the world that he would hardly condescend to speak while enduring them.  But when he had entered the drawing-room his mother greeted him with a letter.  It had come by the day mail, and his mother looked into his face piteously as she gave it to him.  The letter was from Brussels, and she could guess from whom it had come.  It might be a sweetly soft love-letter; but then it might be neither sweet nor soft, in the condition of things in which Harry was now placed.  He took it and looked at it, but did not dare to open it on the spur of the moment.  Without a word he went up to his room, and then tore it asunder.  No doubt, he said to himself, it would allude to his miserable stipend and penniless condition.  The letter ran as follows: 

“Dearest Harry,—­I think it right to write to you, though mamma does not approve of it.  I have told her, however, that in the present circumstances I am bound to do so, and that I should implore you not to answer.  Though I must write, there must be no correspondence between us.  Rumors have been received here very detrimental to your character.”  Harry gnashed his teeth as he read this.  “Stories are told about your meeting with Captain Scarborough in London, which I know to be only in part true.  Mamma says that because of them I ought to give up my engagement, and my uncle, Sir Magnus, has taken upon himself to advise me to do so.  I have told them both that that which is said of you is in part untrue; but whether it be true or whether it be false, I will never give up my engagement unless you ask me to do so.  They tell me that as regards your pecuniary prospects you are ruined.  I say that you cannot be ruined as long as you have my income.  It will not be much, but it will, I should think, be enough.

“And now you can do as you please.  You may be quite sure that I shall be true to you, through ill report and good report.  Nothing that mamma can say to me will change me, and certainly nothing from Sir Magnus.

“And now there need not be a word from you, if you mean to be true to me.  Indeed, I have promised that there shall be no word, and I expect you to keep my promise for me.  If you wish to be free of me, then you must write and say so.

“But you won’t wish it, and therefore I am yours, always, always, always your own

“Florence.”

Harry read the letter standing up in the middle of the room, and in half a minute he had torn off his wet coat and kicked one of his wet boots to the farther corner of the room.  Then there was a knock at the door, and his mother entered, “Tell me, Harry, what she says.”