Will you not think, dearest Mary, I am writing of Caroline, and not of myself; does it not resemble the scenes of my sister’s childhood?  Can you believe that this is an account of your Emmeline, whose sweetness of temper and gentleness of disposition you have so often extolled?  But it was I who thus forgot myself—­I, who once believed nothing ever could make me passionate or angry, and in one minute I was both—­had excited myself till I became so even against my nature, and with whom?—­even my mother, my kind, devoted mother, who has ever done so much for me, whom in my childhood, when I knew her worth much less than I do now, I had never caused to shed a tear.  Oh, Mary, I cannot tell you what I felt the moment those passionate words escaped me.  I may truly say I did not cry from anger, but from the most bitter, the most painful self-reproach.  I think her usual penetration must have discovered this, for if she had thought my tears were really those of passion, she would not, could not have acted as she did.

She drew me gently to her, and kissed me without speaking.  I threw my arms round her neck, and in a voice almost choked by sobs, implored her again and again to forgive me; that I did not mean to answer her so disrespectfully—­that I knew I had become a very wicked girl, but that I really did feel very unhappy.  For a few minutes she was silent, and I could see was struggling to suppress the tears my unusual conduct had occasioned.  I will make no apology, dearest Mary, for entering on such minute details; for I know how you love my mother, and that every word she says is almost as precious to you as to her own children—­quite it cannot be; and I give you this account also, that you may know me as I am, and not imagine I am so free from faults as I know you once believed me.  Oh, when I have looked back on that day, I have felt so painfully humiliated, I would gladly banish the recollection; but it is better for me to remember it, lest I should fancy myself better than I am.  Every word she said in that gentle and persuasive tone was engraved upon my heart, even as she spoke.  She easily and fully convinced me of my sinfulness in thus permitting imaginary evils to make me so miserable:  for that they were but imaginary it was easy to discover.  Not a single blessing could I say I had lost.  All I loved were around me, in health and happiness—­every comfort of life was the same; and could it be possible, mamma said, that the mere departure from a favourite residence, and only for a few months, could render me so completely blind to the many blessings my Heavenly Father had scattered around me.  As she spoke, a film appeared removed from my eyes, and the enormity of my conduct stood for the first time in its true colours before me.  I saw—­I knew how sinful I had been; and bitterly I regretted that I had not confessed every feeling to mamma, instead of hiding them, as I had done, in my own heart, and brooding on them till it became a kind of pleasure