“MY SON:  To-morrow morning, I shall run over to Jersey for a few days until this sad business of yours is settled.  I cannot bear to meet your changed face.  You make no allowances for your father.  Half my expenses have been incurred in educating you; you ought to consider this, and that you owe more to me, as your father, than to any one else.  But in these days parents receive little honor from their children.  When all is settled, write to me at Prince’s Hotel.  It rests upon you whether I ever see Guernsey again.  Your wretched father,

     “RICHARD DOBREE.”

“Can I see it?” asked my mother, holding out her hand.

“No, never mind seeing it,” I answered, “it is about Julia, you know.  It would only trouble you.”

“Captain Carey’s man brought a letter from Julia just now,” she said, taking it from her pocket; “he said there was no answer.”

Her eyelids were still red from weeping, and her voice faltered as if she might break out into sobs any moment.  I took the letter from her, but I did not open it.

“You want to be alone to read it?” she said.  “O Martin! if you can change your mind, and save us all from this trouble, do it, for my sake?”

“If I can I will,” I answered; “but every thing is very hard upon me, mother.”

She could not guess how hard, and, if I could help it, she should never know.  Now I was fully awake, the enormity of my father’s dishonesty and his extreme egotism weighed heavily upon me.  I could not view his conduct in a fairer light than I had done in my amazement the night before.  It grew blacker as I dwelt upon it.  And now he was off to Jersey, shirking the disagreeable consequences of his own delinquency.  I knew how he would spend his time there.  Jersey is no retreat for the penitent.

As soon as my mother was gone I opened Julia’s letter.  It began: 

“MY DEAR MARTIN:  I know all now.  Johanna has told me.  When you spoke to me so hurriedly and unexpectedly, this afternoon, I could not bear to hear another word.  But now I am calm, and I can think it all over quite quietly.

“It is an infatuation, Martin.  Johanna says so as well as I, and she is never wrong.  It is a sheer impossibility that you, in your sober senses, should love a strange person, whose very name you do not know, better than you do me, your cousin, your sister, your fiancee, whom you have known all your life, and loved.  I am quite sure of that, with a very true affection.

“It vexes me to write about that person in any connection with yourself.  Emma spoke of her in her last letter from Sark; not at all in reference to you, however.  She is so completely of a lower class, that it would never enter Emma’s head that you could see any thing in her.  She said there was a rumor afloat that Tardif was about to marry the girl you had been attending, and that everybody in