'

'If you know that letter is for me, why did you meddle with it?' she
coolly answered.

'Upon my word, this is assurance,' cried Mervyn.

'Give me my letter,' repeated Bertha, reaching out for it. 'No one else
has a right to touch it.'

'If there be nothing amiss,' said Phoebe, coming to the relief of her
brother, who was almost speechless at this audacity, 'why receive it
under cover to a servant?'

'Because prejudice surrounds me,' stoutly replied Bertha, with barely a
hitch in her speech, as if making a grand stroke; but seeing her brother
smile, she added in an annihilating tone, 'practical tyranny is exercised
in every family until education and intellect effect a moral
emancipation.'

'What?' said Mervyn, 'education teaching you to write letters in German
hand! Fine results! I tell you, if you were older, the disgrace of this
would stick to you for life, but if you will tell the whole truth about
this scoundrel, and put an end to it, we will do the best we can for
you.'

She made up a disdainful mouth, and said, 'Thank you.'

'After all,' said Mervyn, turning to Phoebe, 'it is a joke! Look at her!
She is a baby! You need not have made such a rout. This is only a
toy-letter to a little girl; very good practice in German writing.'

'I am engaged to John Hastings heart and hand,' said Bertha in high
dignity, little knowing that she thus first disclosed the name.

'Yes, people talk of children being their little wives,' said Mervyn,
'but you are getting too old for such nonsense, though he does not think
you so.'

'It is the joint purpose of our lives,' said Bertha.

Mervyn gave his scoffing laugh, and again addressing Phoebe, said, 'If it
were you, now, or any one with whom he was not in sport, it would be a
serious matter. The fellow got himself expelled from Harrow, then was
the proverb of even a German university, ran through his means before he
was five-and-twenty, is as much at home in the Queen's Bench as I am in
this study, has been outlawed, lived on _rouge et noir_ at Baden till he
got whitewashed when his mother died, and since that has lived on
betting, or making himself agreeable to whoever would ask him.'

'Many thanks on the part of your intimate friend,' said Bertha, with
suppressed passion.

Mervyn stamped his foot, and Phoebe defended him with, 'Men may associate
with those who are no companions for their sisters, Bertha.'

'Contracted minds always accept malignant reports