it is to be motherless
and undirected. Gossip is long-tongued enough to reach me here, in
full venom as I know and trust, but it makes my blood boil, till I
can't help writing a warning that may at least save you pain. I know
you are the snowdrop poor Owen used to call you, and I know you have
Honor Charlecote for philosopher, and friend, but she is nearly as
unsophisticated as yourself, and if report say true, your brother is
getting you into a scrape. If it is a fact that he has Jack Hastings
dangling about Beauchamp, he deserves the lot of my unlucky Charteris
cousins! Mind what you are about, Phoebe, if the man is there. He
is plausible, clever, has no end of amusing resources, and keeps his
head above water; but I _know_ that in no place where there are
womankind has he been received without there having been cause to
repent it! I hope you may be able to laugh--if not, it may be a
wholesome cure to hear that his friends believe him to have secured
one of the heiresses at Beauchamp. There, Phoebe, I have said my
say, and I fear it is cutting and wounding, but it came out of the
love of a heart that has not got rid of some of its old feelings, and
that could not bear to think of sorrow or evil tongues busy about
you. That I write for your sake, not for my own, you may see by my
making it impossible to answer.

'LUCILLA SANDBROOK.

'If you hold council with Honor over this--as, if you are wise, you
will--you may tell her that I am learning gratitude to her. I would ask
her pardon if I could without servility.'

'Secured one of the heiresses!' said Phoebe to herself. 'I should like
to be able to tell Lucy how I can laugh! Poor Lucy, how very kind in her
to write. I wonder whether Mervyn knows how bad the man is! Shall I go
to Miss Charlecote? Oh, no; she is spending two days at Moorcroft!
Shall I tell Miss Fennimore? No, I think not, it will be wiser to talk
to Miss Charlecote; I don't like to tell Miss Fennimore of Lucy. Poor
Lucy--she is always generous! He will soon be gone, and then I can speak
to Mervyn.'

This secret was not a serious burthen to Phoebe, though she could not
help smiling to herself at the comical notion of having been secured by a
man to whom she had not spoken a dozen times, and then with the utmost
coldness and formality.

The next day she a