position, and you may say so to people who inquire after me (if any one does).  Write to me, dear, whenever you can.  You do a good deed when you send me a letter, for you comfort a very desolate heart.”

One of the reasons for the silent estrangement between Madame Heger and Miss Bronte, in the second year of her residence at Brussels, is to be found in the fact, that the English Protestant’s dislike of Romanism increased with her knowledge of it, and its effects upon those who professed it; and when occasion called for an expression of opinion from Charlotte Bronte, she was uncompromising truth.  Madame Heger, on the opposite side, was not merely a Roman Catholic, she was devote.  Not of a warm or impulsive temperament, she was naturally governed by her conscience, rather than by her affections; and her conscience was in the hands of her religious guides.  She considered any slight thrown upon her Church as blasphemy against the Holy Truth; and, though she was not given to open expression of her thoughts and feelings, yet her increasing coolness of behaviour showed how much her most cherished opinions had been wounded.  Thus, although there was never any explanation of Madame Heger’s change of manner, this may be given as one great reason why, about this time, Charlotte was made painfully conscious of a silent estrangement between them; an estrangement of which, perhaps, the former was hardly aware.  I have before alluded to intelligence from home, calculated to distress Charlotte exceedingly with fears respecting Branwell, which I shall speak of more at large when the realisation of her worst apprehensions came to affect the daily life of herself and her sisters.  I allude to the subject again here, in order that the reader may remember the gnawing, private cares, which she had to bury in her own heart; and the pain of which could only be smothered for a time under the diligent fulfilment of present duty.  Another dim sorrow was faintly perceived at this time.  Her father’s eyesight began to fail; it was not unlikely that he might shortly become blind; more of his duty must devolve on a curate, and Mr. Bronte, always liberal, would have to pay at a higher rate than he had heretofore done for this assistance.

She wrote thus to Emily:—­

“Dec.1st, 1843.

“This is Sunday morning.  They are at their idolatrous ‘messe,’ and I am here, that is in the Refectoire.  I should like uncommonly to be in the dining-room at home, or in the kitchen, or in the back kitchen.  I should like even to be cutting up the hash, with the clerk and some register people at the other table, and you standing by, watching that I put enough flour, not too much pepper, and, above all, that I save the best pieces of the leg of mutton for Tiger and Keeper, the first of which personages would be jumping about the dish and carving-knife, and the latter standing like a devouring flame on the kitchen-floor.  To complete the picture,