e reason, Charlotte; but we cannot keep so
good a servant--Mr. Frost has given up--'

'I have been put out of the school,' said James, from his sofa, in his
stern sense of truth. 'We must live on as little as possible, and
therefore must part with you, Charlotte, though from no fault of yours.
You must look on us as your friends, and in any difficulty apply to us;
for, as Mrs. Frost says, we look on you as a charge from my
grandmother.'

Charlotte escaped to hide her tears; and when, a few minutes after, the
Ormersfield carriage arrived, and nurses and babies were packed in, and
her master walked feebly and languidly down stairs, and her mistress
turned round to say, kindly, 'You will let me know, Charlotte?' she
just articulated, 'Thank you, ma'am, I will write.'

Mr. Frost's words had not been news to Charlotte. His affairs had been
already pretty well understood and discussed, and the hard, rude,
grasping comments of the vulgar cook--nay, even of the genteel
nurse--had been so many wounds to the little maiden, bred up by Jane in
the simplicity of feudal reverence and affection for all that bore the
name of Frost Dynevor.

Her mistress left to the tender mercies of some servant such as these,
some one who might only care for her own ease and profit, and not once
think of who and what she had been! The little children knocked about
by some careless girl! Never, never! All the doubts and scruples
about putting her own weak head and vain heart in the way of being made
faithless to Tom revived, reinforced by her strong and generous
affection. A romantic purpose suddenly occurred to her, flushing her
cheek and brightening her eye. In that one impulse, scrubbing, washing
dishes, short lilac sleeves were either forgotten, or acquired a
positive glory, and while the cook was issuing her invitations for a
jollification and gossip at the expense of Mr. and Mrs. Frost,
Charlotte sat in her attic, amid Jane's verbenas, which she had
cherished there ever since their expulsion from the kitchen, and wrote
and cried, and left off, to read over, and feel satisfied at, the
felicity of her phrases, and the sentiment of her project.

'Dear and Honoured Madam,--Pardon the liberty I am taking but I am sure
that you and my reverend and redoubted master would not willingly have
inflicted so much pain as yesterday on a poor young female which was
brought up from an orphan child by my dear late lamented mistress and
owes everyth