--I should feel myself utterly unworthy of the good opinion which I
trust I am honored with by your admirable daughter, were I any longer
to remain silent upon a subject of the deepest importance to her future
happiness. I understand that she is almost immediately about to
become the wife of Lord Dunroe. Now, sir, I entreat your most serious
attention; and I am certain, if you will only bestow it upon the few
words I am about to write, that you, and especially Miss Gourlay, will
live to thank God that I interposed to prevent this unhallowed union.
I say then, emphatically, as I shall be able to prove most distinctly,
that if you permit Miss Gourlay to become the wife of this young
nobleman you will seal her ruin--defeat the chief object which you
cherish, for her in life, and live to curse the day on which you
urged it on. The communications which I have to make are of too much
importance to be committed to paper; but if you will only allow me, and
I once more implore it for the sake of your child, as well as for your
own future ease of mind, the privilege of a short interview, I shall
completely satisfy you as to the truth of what I state.

"I have the honor to be, sir,

"Your obliged and obedient servant,

"Martha Mainwaring."

Having perused the first sentence of this earnest and friendly
letter, Sir Thomas indignantly flung it into a drawer where he kept
all communications to which it did not please him at the moment to pay
particular attention.

Lucy's health in the meantime was fast breaking: but so delicate and
true was her sense of honor and duty that she would have looked upon any
clandestine communication with her lover as an infraction of the solemn
engagement into which she had entered for her father's sake,--and by
which, even at the expense of her own happiness, she considered herself
bound. Still, she felt that a communication on the subject was due to
him, and her principal hope now was that her father would allow her
to make it. If he, however, refused this sanction to an act of common
justice, then she resolved to write to him openly, and make the wretched
circumstances in which she was involved, and the eternal barrier that
had been placed between them, known to him at once.

Her father, however, now found, to his utter mortification, that he was
driving matters somewhat too fast, and that his daughter's health must
unquestionably be restored before he could think of outraging humanity
and pu