a Clavering. I have recently returned
to England after long residence abroad. I perceive by my deceased
sister's will that she has confided her only daughter to my
guardianship, conjointly with yourself. I am anxious to participate
in that tender charge. I am alone in the world,--an habitual sufferer;
afflicted with a partial paralysis that deprives me of the use of my
limbs. In such circumstances, it is the more natural that I should turn
to the only relative left me. My journey to England has so exhausted
my strength, and all movement is so painful, that I must request you
to excuse me for not coming in person for my niece. Your benevolence,
however, will, I am sure, prompt you to afford me the comfort of her
society, and as soon as you can, contrive some suitable arrangement for
her journey. Begging you to express to Helen, in my name, the assurance
of such a welcome as is due from me to my sister's child, and waiting
with great anxiety your reply, I am, dear Sir, Your very faithful
servant, LUCRETIA DALIBARD.

P. S. I can scarcely venture to ask you to bring Helen yourself to town,
but I should be glad if other inducements to take the journey afforded
me the pleasure of seeing you once again. I am anxious, in addition
to such details of my late sister as you may be enabled to give me, to
learn something of the history of her connection with Mr. Ardworth, in
whom I felt much interested years ago, and who, I am recently informed,
left an infant, his supposed son, under your care. So long absent from
England, how much have I to learn, and how little the mere gravestones
tell us of the dead!

While the vicar is absorbed in this letter, equally unwelcome and
unexpected; while, unconscious as the daughter of Ceres, gathering
flowers when the Hell King drew near, of the change that awaited her and
the grim presence that approached on her fate, Helen bends still
over the bank odorous with shrinking violets,--we turn where the new
generation equally invites our gaze, and make our first acquaintance
with two persons connected with the progress of our tale.

The britzska stopped. The servant, who had been gradually accumulating
present dust and future rheumatisms on the "bad eminence" of a
rumble-tumble, exposed to the nipping airs of an English sky, leaped to
the ground and opened the carriage-door.

"This is the best place for the view, sir,--a little to the right."

Percival St. John threw aside his book (a volume of V