from a set of cut-throat scoundrels who lived by robbery and murder.  I. couldn’t point to the time when the Ablewhites hadn’t a shirt to their backs, and couldn’t sign their own names.  Ha! ha!  I wasn’t good enough for the Herncastles, when I married.  And now, it comes to the pinch, my son isn’t good enough for you.  I suspected it, all along.  You have got the Herncastle blood in you, my young lady!  I suspected it all along.”

“A very unworthy suspicion,” remarked Mr. Bruff.  “I am astonished that you have the courage to acknowledge it.”

Before Mr. Ablewhite could find words to answer in, Rachel spoke in a tone of the most exasperating contempt.

“Surely,” she said to the lawyer, “this is beneath notice.  If he can think in that way, let us leave him to think as he pleases.”

From scarlet, Mr. Ablewhite was now becoming purple.  He gasped for breath; he looked backwards and forwards from Rachel to Mr. Bruff in such a frenzy of rage with both of them that he didn’t know which to attack first.  His wife, who had sat impenetrably fanning herself up to this time, began to be alarmed, and attempted, quite uselessly, to quiet him.  I had, throughout this distressing interview, felt more than one inward call to interfere with a few earnest words, and had controlled myself under a dread of the possible results, very unworthy of a Christian Englishwoman who looks, not to what is meanly prudent, but to what is morally right.  At the point at which matters had now arrived, I rose superior to all considerations of mere expediency.  If I had contemplated interposing any remonstrance of my own humble devising, I might possibly have still hesitated.  But the distressing domestic emergency which now confronted me, was most marvellously and beautifully provided for in the Correspondence of Miss Jane Ann Stamper—­Letter one thousand and one, on “Peace in Families.”  I rose in my modest corner, and I opened my precious book.

“Dear Mr. Ablewhite,” I said, “one word!”

When I first attracted the attention of the company by rising, I could see that he was on the point of saying something rude to me.  My sisterly form of address checked him.  He stared at me in heathen astonishment.

“As an affectionate well-wisher and friend,” I proceeded, “and as one long accustomed to arouse, convince, prepare, enlighten, and fortify others, permit me to take the most pardonable of all liberties—­the liberty of composing your mind.”

He began to recover himself; he was on the point of breaking out—­he would have broken out, with anybody else.  But my voice (habitually gentle) possesses a high note or so, in emergencies.  In this emergency, I felt imperatively called upon to have the highest voice of the two.

I held up my precious book before him; I rapped the open page impressively with my forefinger.  “Not my words!” I exclaimed, in a burst of fervent interruption.  “Oh, don’t suppose that I claim attention for My humble words!  Manna in the wilderness, Mr. Ablewhite!  Dew on the parched earth!  Words of comfort, words of wisdom, words of love—­the blessed, blessed, blessed words of Miss Jane Ann Stamper!”