GLENFERN CASTLE, —–­SHIRIE, June 19, 181—.

“It is impossible for language to express to you the shame, grief, amazement, and indignation, with which we are all filled at the distressing, the ignominious disclosure that has just taken place concerning you, through our most excellent friend Miss P. M’Pry.  Oh, Mary, how have you deceived us all!!!  What a dagger have you plunged into all our hearts!  Your poor Aunt Grizzy! how my heart bleeds for her!  What a difficult part has she to act! and at her time of life! with her acute feelings! with her devoted attachment to the house of M’Laughlan!  What a blow! and a blow from your hand! Oh, Mary, I must again repeat, how have you deceived us all!!!  Yet do not imagine I mean to reproach you!  Much, much of the blame is doubtless imputable to the errors of your education!  At the same time, even these offer no justification of your conduct upon the present occasion!  You are now (I lament to say it!) come to that time of life when you ought to know what is right; or, where you entertain any doubts, you ought most unquestionably to apply to those who, you may be certain, are well qualified to direct you. But, instead of that, you have pursued a diametrically opposite plan: a plan which might have ended in your destruction!  Oh, Mary, I cannot too often repeat, how have you deceived us all!!!  From no lips but those of Miss M’Pry would I have believed what I have heard, videlicet, that you (oh, Mary!) have, for many, many months past, been carrying on a clandestine correspondence with a young man, unknown, unsuspected by all your friends here! and that young man, the very last man on the face of the earth whom you, or any of us, ought to have given our countenance to! The very man, in short, whom we were all bound, by every principle of duty, gratitude, and esteem, to have shunned, and who you are bound, from this moment, to renounce for ever.  How you ever came to be acquainted with Colonel Charles Lennox of Rose Hall is a mystery none of us can fathom; but surely the person, whoever it was that brought it about, has much, much to answer for!  Mrs. Douglas (to whom I thought it proper to make an immediate communication on the subject) pretends to have been well informed of all that has been going on, and even insists that your acquaintance with the Lennox family took place through Lady M’Laughlan! But that