my brother-in-law, present to him my credentials, and remain a few days at his house as his guest, in the enjoyment of my sister’s society, until my needs could be supplied from certain resources at a distance.  The reception I met with from his elder daughter, and the information she haughtily gave me, determined my course.  I sought no more the inhospitable roof of Mr. Monfort, to find shelter beneath which I had forfeited all claim by the death of my sister, then first suddenly revealed to me.  Her child, I was told, had been recently injured by burning and could not be seen, even by so near a relative, and the manner of the young lady, whom I now identify as Evelyn Monfort, was such as to lead me at the time to believe this a mere excuse or evasion, which I did not seek to oppose.

“It is just possible that there may be a third sister, yet I think I have heard you say you had but one, and this reminiscence is anguish to my mind.  Even more, the careless and unwarrantable allusions of Mr. Gregory to certain scars, evidently from burns that he had the insolence to observe on your neck and arms, and remark upon as mere foils to their beauty, in my first acquaintance with you and before I had a right to silence him, recurred to me as a partial confirmation of my fears.  Without explaining to him my motives, I questioned him on this subject again soon after he handed me your note, a proceeding that I should have shrunk from as gross and unworthy of a gentleman under any other circumstances.  I did not stop to think what impression my inquiries would leave upon his mind, ever prone to levity and suspicion; but he must have seen that I was deeply moved, and that no impertinent curiosity could sway me to such a course with regard to the woman I loved and had openly declared my plighted wife.  You will understand all this and make allowance for me.  Write to me immediately, and relieve, if possible, my intense solicitude.  At all events, let me know the truth, and look it in the face as soon as may be.  Any reality is better than suspense.  Yet I must ‘hope against hope,’ or surrender wholly.  I have not time to write another line.  My business is imperative, or I should certainly retrace my steps.

    “Yours eternally,

    “WENTWORTH.”

The man who wrote this letter was capable of condensing in a few calm words a world of passion, whether he spoke or wrote them; but he had governed his pen carefully in his agonizing uncertainty.  It was yet to be determined when he penned these lines whether he should be considered a lover addressing his mistress, or an uncle writing to his niece, and in this bitter perplexity he commanded his inclinations to the side of principle.

I wept with tears of joy and thankfulness above this constrained epistle—­I pressed it to my heart, my lips, a thousand times, in the quiet hours of night, in the moments of retirement my jailer granted me.  The child Ernie alone saw and wondered at these manifestations of which I first saw the extravagance through his solemn imitations thereof, which yet made me catch him rapturously in my arms and kiss him a thousand times, until he put me aside, at last, with decorous dignity, as one transcending privilege.