of her daughter's
correspondence upstairs.

"There, that will do," she said to the lady's maid, "you can take up
the tray; I will bring Miss Miller's letters up to her myself after
breakfast."

After which, without more ado, she walked to the window and opened the
letter. Some people might have had scruples as to such a strong measure.
Mrs. Miller had none at all. Her children, she argued, were her own
property and under her own care; as long as they lived under her roof,
they had no right over anything that they possessed independently of
their mother.

Under ordinary circumstances she would not have opened a letter addressed
to any of her children; but if there was anything of a suspicious nature
in their correspondence, she certainly reserved to herself the perfect
right of dealing with it as she thought fit.

She opened the letter and read the first line; it ran thus:--

"My dearest darling Beatrice." She then turned to the end of it and read
the last; it was this: "Your own most devoted and loving Herbert."

That was quite enough for Mrs. Miller; she did not want to read any more
of it. She slipped the letter into her pocket, and went back to the
breakfast-table and poured out the tea and coffee for her husband and her
sons.

But when the family meal was over, it was with a very angry aspect that
Mrs. Miller went upstairs and stood by her eldest daughter's bedside.

"Beatrice, here is a letter which has come for you this morning, of which
I must ask you an explanation."

"You have read it, mamma!" flushing angrily, as she took it from her
mother's hand.

"I have read the first line and the last. I certainly should not take the
trouble to wade all through such contemptible trash!" Which was an
unprovoked insult to poor Beatrice's feelings.

She snatched the letter from her mother's hand, and crumpled it jealously
under her pillow.

"How can you call it trash, then, if you have not read it?"

It was hard, certainly; to have her letter opened was bad enough, but to
have it called names was worse still. The letter, which to Beatrice would
be so full of sacred charm and delight--such a poem on love and its
sweetness--was nothing more to her mother than "contemptible trash!"

But where in the whole world has a love-letter been indited, however
delightful and perfect it may be to the writer and the receiver of it,
that is nothing but an object of ridicule or contempt to the whole world
beside? Love is d