may not pass from life with starvation as her companion.  My brother’s gift is expended; and during the last three weeks I have earned but twelve shillings; my pupils are out of town.  Do, for a moment remember what I was, and think how humbled I must be to frame this supplication; but it is a child that petitions for a parent, and I know I have never forfeited your esteem.  In a few weeks, perhaps in a few days, my brother and my mother will meet my poor father face to face.  Oh! that I could be assured that reproach and bitterness for the past do not pass the portals of the grave.  Forgive me this, as you have already forgiven me much.  Alas!  I know too well that our misfortunes drew misfortunes upon others.  I was the unhappy but innocent cause of much sorrow at the Grange; but, oh! do not refuse the last request that I will ever make.”  The letter was blotted by tears.

Charles Adams was from home when it arrived, and his wife, knowing the handwriting, and having made a resolution never to open a letter “from that branch of the family,” did not send it after her husband “lest it might tease him.”  Ten days elapsed before he received it; and when he did, he could not be content with writing, but lost not a moment in hastening to the address.  Irritated and disappointed that what he really had done should have been so little appreciated, when every hour of his life he was smarting in one way or other from his exertions—­broken-hearted at his daughter’s blighted health and happiness—­angered by the reckless wildness of one nephew, and what he believed was the idleness of another—­and convinced that Rosa’s fearful step was owing to the pampering and mismanagement of her foolish mother—­Charles Adams satisfied himself that, as he did not hear to the contrary from Mary, all things were going on well, or at least not ill.  He thought as little about them as he possibly could, no people in the world being so conveniently forgotten (when they are not importunate) as poor relations; but the letter of his favourite niece spoke strongly to his heart, and in two hours after his return home he set forth for the London suburb from whence the letter was dated.  It so chanced, that to get to that particular end of the town, he was obliged to pass the house his brother had occupied so splendidly for a number of years; the servants had lit the lamps, and were drawing the curtains of the noble dining-room; and a party of ladies were descending from a carriage, which prevented two others from setting down.  It looked like old times.  “Some one else,” thought Charles Adams, “running the same career of wealth and extravagance.  God grant it may not lead to the same results!” He paused, and looked up the front of the noble mansion; the drawing-room windows were open, and two beautiful children were standing on an ottoman placed between the windows, probably to keep them apart.  He thought of Mary’s childhood, and how she was occupied at that moment, and hastened onward.  There are times when life seems one mingled dream, and it is not easy to become dispossessed of the idea when some of its frightful changes are brought almost together under our view.