’Dearest Lily, ’I hardly know how to tell you what has happened, it is so very terrible.  But perhaps you will have heard it already, as everybody is talking about it here.  It has got into the newspapers, and therefore it cannot be kept secret.  Not that I should keep anything from you; only this is so very dreadful that I hardly know how to write it.  Somebody says—­a Mr Soames, I believe it is—­that papa has taken some money that does not belong to him, and he is to be brought before the magistrates and tried.  Of course papa has done nothing wrong.  I do think he would be the last man in the world to take a penny that did not belong to him.  You know how poor he is; what a life he has had!  But I think he would almost sooner see mamma starving;—­I am sure he would rather be starved himself, then even borrow a shilling which he could not pay.  To suppose that he would take money’

(she had tried to write the word ‘steal’ but she could not bring her pen to form the letters)

’is monstrous.  But, somehow, the circumstances have been made to look bad against him, and they say that he must come over here to the magistrates.  I often think that of all men in the world papa is the most unfortunate.  Everything seems to go against him, and yet he is so good!  Poor mamma has been over here, and she is distracted.  I never saw her so wretched before.  She has been to your friend Mr Walker, and came to me afterwards for a minute.  Mr Walker has got something to do with it, though mamma says she thinks he is quite friendly to papa.  I wonder whether you could find out, through Mr Walker, what he thinks about it.  Of course, mamma knows that papa has done nothing wrong; but she says that the whole thing is so mysterious, and that she does not know how to account for the money.  Papa, you know, is not like other people.  He forgets things; and is always thinking, thinking, thinking of his great misfortunes.  Poor papa!  My heart bleeds so when I remember all his sorrows, that I hate myself for thinking about myself.

’When mamma left me—­and it was then I first knew that papa would really have to be tried—­I went to Miss Annabella, and told her that I would go home.  She asked me why, and I said I would not disgrace her house by staying in it.  She got up and took me in her arms, and there came a tear out of both her dear old eyes, and she said that if anything evil came to papa—­which she would not believe, as she knew him to be a good man—­there should be a home in her house not only for me, but for mamma and Jane.  Isn’t she a wonderful woman?  When I think of her, I sometimes think that she must be an angel already.  Then she became very serious—­for just before, through her tears she had tried to smile—­and she told me to remember that all people could not be like her, who had nobody to look to but herself and her sister; and that at present I must task myself not to think of that which I had been thinking of before.