Another extract, the closing one, and then forever away with Basil Bainrothe and his flimsy letters: 

“Again, I must congratulate you on the subdued and humbled temper you manifest.  Claude, and Evelyn, and I, had just been discussing a plan for removing you to another asylum, where stricter discipline and less luxurious externals are employed to conquer the otherwise unmanageable inmates.  Dr. Englehart, you know, holds up the theory of indulgence to his patients, and I am rejoiced to find his measures have at last prevailed over your frenzy.  Mabel, like your other friends, believes you dead, and is at home with Evelyn and Claude, and is growing in beauty and intelligence every day.

“She was quite shocked at her uncle’s wild behavior, and positively refused to go with him, is fond of Mr. Gregory, and remembers you with affection.

“Owing to my knowledge of your condition for the last year, my dear child, I don’t blame you for any thing that is past, not even for those delusions with regard to my own acts and intentions which formed your mania, nor for the misfortune and sense of shame which, no doubt, caused your hasty flight, and whose evidences you brought with you from the raft, in the shape of a nearly year-old child.

“I remain, faithfully yours,

“B.B.”

The shameful accusations which brought the blood to my brow ought to have been easier to bear than all the rest, because so easily confuted, and because I knew not really believed; but they were not.  The very idea of shame humiliated me more than positive ill-treatment could have done; and, spotless though I knew myself to be (as others knew me too—­all I loved and cared for), still my purity was shocked by such injustice.

I felt like one who had gone out to walk in fresh attire, and been mud-pelted by rude urchins, so that the outward robes, at least, were soiled, and a sense of degradation and uncleanness became the consequence in spite of reason.  But, after all, the dress could be easily changed when opportunity should occur, and all be made clean again, and the mud-pelting forgotten or overlooked, and the urchins punished or dismissed in scorn.

Surely, God would not much longer permit this fiend to subjugate me.  Had I not suffered sufficiently?  Alas I who but our Creator can judge of our deserts, or measure our power to bear?

In my adversity and lonely trouble I had drawn near to Him and his blessed Son—­our Mediator, and example, and only strength.  Dear as was still the memory of that earthly love, the only real passion I had ever known, could ever know, it came no longer to my spirit as a substitute for religion.  I had learned to separate my worship of God from my fealty to man, yet was this last not weakened, but strengthened, by such discrimination.

If only for the gift of grace it brought to me, let me bless my sad captivity!

CHAPTER XI.