ce.

As I had found it before, hard work proved now to be the best specific
for dull spirits, and during the next few days I gave the remedy a full
trial.

It seemed ages before any letter came from Packworth, and I was dying to
hear. For meanwhile all sorts of doubts and fears took hold of me. How
had that strange family meeting gone off? Had it been marred by
Masham's cruel letter? or was the poor lost father once more finding
happiness in the sight of one whom he had last seen an infant beside his
dead wife? Surely if sympathy and common interest were to count for
kinship, I was as much a member of that little family as any of them!

At last the letter came. It was from Jack:

"Dear Fred,--We got down on Wednesday. Father went that night to the
hotel, as his heart failed him at the last moment. I went on to Mrs
Shield's, and found your telegram on my arrival. I was horrified, but
hardly surprised at what it told me. Happily, Mary was in bed, as I had
not been expected till the morning, so I was able to explain all to Mrs
Shield. She knew all about it before I told her; for the enclosed
letter had arrived by the post in the morning, addressed to Mary.
Mercifully, seeing it was in a strange hand, and, as I have often told
you, being most jealously careful of Mary, Mrs Shield took it into her
head to open the letter and read it before giving it to Mary, and you
may imagine her utter horror. She of course did not let her see it, and
thus saved the child from what would have been a fearful shock; and I
was able to break it all to her gradually. Father is to come this
evening--I am thankful it is all so well over.

"How are you getting on? Anything fresh at Hawk Street? I don't envy
Hawkesbury or his friend their feelings just now; but I am determined to
take no notice of this last brutal plot. Good-bye now.

"Yours ever,--

"J.S."

The enclosure, written in an evidently disguised hand, was as follows:--

"An unknown admirer thinks it may interest Mary Smith to know that her
father is a common thief and swindler, who has just come back from
fourteen years' penal servitude among the convicts. He is now living in
London with his son, Mary's brother, who, Mary may as well know, is
following close in his dear father's footsteps, however pious he may
seem to others. This is the truth, or the writer would not have taken
the trouble to send it. The best thing, if Mary wants to prevent the
whole affair