ressed her father familiarly as "My dear
Roderick," and it proceeded in these words:--

"The delay in the sailing of your ship offers me an opportunity of
writing to you again. My last letter told you of my father's death. I
was then quite unprepared for an event which has happened, since that
affliction befell me. Prepare yourself to be surprised. Our old moated
house at Sandyseal, in which we have spent so many happy holidays when
we were schoolfellows, is sold.

"You will be almost as sorry as I was to hear this; and you will be
quite as surprised as I was, when I tell you that Sandyseal Place has
become a Priory of English Nuns, of the order of St. Benedict.

"I think I see you look up from my letter, with your big black eyes
staring straight before you, and say and swear that this must be one
of my mystifications. Unfortunately (for I am fond of the old house in
which I was born) it is only too true. The instructions in my father's
will, under which Sandyseal has been sold, are peremptory. They are the
result of a promise made, many years since, to his wife.

"You and I were both very young when my poor mother died; but I think
you must remember that she, like the rest of her family, was a Roman
Catholic.

"Having reminded you of this, I may next tell you that Sandyseal Place
was my mother's property. It formed part of her marriage portion, and
it was settled on my father if she died before him, and if she left
no female child to survive her. I am her only child. My father was
therefore dealing with his own property when he ordered the house to be
sold. His will leaves the purchase money to me. I would rather have kept
the house.

"But why did my mother make him promise to sell the place at his death?

"A letter, attached to my father's will, answers this question, and
tells a very sad story. In deference to my mother's wishes it was kept
strictly a secret from me while my father lived.

"There was a younger sister of my mother's who was the beauty of the
family; loved and admired by everybody who was acquainted with her. It
is needless to make this long letter longer by dwelling on the girl's
miserable story. You have heard it of other girls, over and over
again. She loved and trusted; she was deceived and deserted. Alone and
friendless in a foreign country; her fair fame blemished; her hope in
the future utterly destroyed, she attempted to drown herself. This took
place in France. The best of good wo