respectable, steady people as did not
object to observe the primitive hours and customs enforced at Fairdown
Farm. Here I enjoyed the privilege of writing to, and hearing from, my
dear Miss Marion; and though she never complained, or suffered a
murmur to escape her, yet from the tenor of her letters I had great
cause to fear things were all going very wrong at Mr Dacre's, and that
her own health, always delicate, was giving way beneath the pressure
of anxiety and unkindness.

In less than six months after I had quitted the family, a climax,
which I had long anticipated with dread, actually arrived. Mr Dacre,
suddenly called to his account, was found to have left his temporal
affairs involved in inextricable and hopeless ruin; and amid the
general crash and desolation, who was to shield or befriend the poor
dependent, the orphan niece, Miss Marion? She was rudely cast adrift
on the cold world; her proffered sympathy and services tauntingly
rejected by those who had now a hard battle to fight on their own
account. Broken down in health and spirits, the poor young lady flew
to me, her humble, early friend, gratefully and eagerly availing
herself of Thomas Wesley's cordial invitation, to make his house her
home for the present.

My brother was a kind-hearted, just man; he had once been to see me
when I lived at Mr Dacre's; and that gentleman, in his palmy days, was
truly hospitable and generous to all comers. Thomas never forgot his
reception, and now he was a proud and happy man to be enabled thus to
offer 'a slight return,' as he modestly said, to one of the family.
With much concern we all viewed Miss Marion's wan and careworn looks,
so touching in the young; 'But her dim blue een will get bright again,
and she'll fill out--never fear,' said Martha Wesley to me, by way of
comfort and encouragement, 'now we've got her amongst _us_, poor dear.
I doubt those proud Misses Dacre were not over-tender with such a one
as sweet Miss Marion'----

'Dame, dame, don't let that tongue of thine wag so fast,' interrupted
Thomas, for he never liked to hear people ill spoken of behind their
backs, though he would speak out plainly enough to everybody's face.

A few days after Miss Marion's arrival at Fairdown (it was just at the
hay-making season, and the earth was very beautiful--birds singing and
flowers blooming--soft breezes blowing, and musical streamlets
murmuring rejoicingly in the sunshine), a pedestrian was seen
advancing le