erve that I
express no opinion myself whether it be true or false,
whether proper or improper. After your conduct the other
day I should not think of interfering myself; but your
father wishes me to ask for his information.

Yours truly,

CLARA KINGSBURY.

Hampstead's answer was very short, but quite sufficient for the
purpose;--

MY DEAR LADY KINGSBURY,

I am not engaged to marry Miss Fay,--as yet. I think that
I may be some day soon.

Yours affectionately,

HAMPSTEAD.

By the same post he wrote a letter to his father, and that shall also
be shown to the reader.

MY DEAR FATHER,--

I have received a letter from Lady Kingsbury, asking me as
to a report of an engagement between me and a young lady
named Marion Fay. I am sorry that her writing should be
evidence that you are hardly yet strong enough to write
yourself. I trust that it may not long be so.

Would you wish to see me again at Trafford? I do not like
to go there without the expression of a wish from you;
but I hold myself in readiness to start whenever you may
desire it. I had hoped from the last accounts that you
were becoming stronger.

I do not know how you may have heard anything of Marion
Fay. Had I engaged myself to her, or to any other young
lady, I should have told you at once. I do not know
whether a young man is supposed to declare his own
failures in such matters, when he has failed,--even to his
father. But, as I am ashamed of nothing in the matter, I
will avow that I have asked the young lady to be my wife,
but she has as yet declined. I shall ask her again, and
still hope to succeed.

She is the daughter of a Mr. Fay who, as Lady Kingsbury
says, is a Quaker, and is a clerk in a house in the City.
As he is in all respects a good man, standing high for
probity and honour among those who know him, I cannot
think that there is any drawback. She, I think, has all
the qualities which I would wish to find in the woman
whom I might hope to make my wife. They live at No. 17,
Paradise Row, Holloway. Lady Kingsbury, indeed, is right
in all her details.

Pray let me have a line, if not from yourself, at any rate
dictated by you, to say how you are.

Your affectionate son,

HAMPSTEAD.

It was impossible to keep the letter from Lady Kingsbury. It thus
became a recognized fact by the Marquis,