t Mr. Carr lend her
paintings to copy from, just as if they had known each other all their
lives. Next to his blind trust in his daughter, because he was so fond
of her, was his blind trust in this stranger, because the gentleman's
manners were so quiet and kind, and because he sent us presents of
expensive flowers to plant in our garden. He would not authorize me to
open Mary's letters, or to forbid her ever to walk out alone; and he
even told me once that I did not know how to make proper allowances for
young people.

"Allowances! I knew my niece better, and my duty as one of an honest
family better, than to make allowances for such conduct as hers. I kept
the tightest hand over her that I could. I advised her, argued with her,
ordered her, portioned out her time for her, watched her, warned her,
told her in the plainest terms, that she should not deceive me--she or
her gentleman! I was honest and open, and said I disapproved so strongly
of the terms she kept up with Mr. Carr, that if ever it lay in my power
to cut short their acquaintance together, I would most assuredly do it.
I even told her plainly that if she once got into mischief, it would
then be too late to reclaim her; and she answered in her reckless,
sluttish way, that if she ever did get into mischief it would be nothing
but my aggravation that would drive her to it; and that she believed
her father's kindness would never find it too late to reclaim her again.
This is only one specimen of the usual insolence and wickedness of all
her replies to me."

(As he finished this paragraph, Mat dashed the letter down angrily on
his knee, and cursed the writer of it with some of those gold-digger's
imprecations which it had been his misfortune to hear but too often in
the past days of his Californian wanderings. It was evidently only by
placing considerable constraint upon himself, that he now refrained from
crumpling up the letter and throwing it from him in disgust. However, he
spread it out flat before him once more--looked first at one paragraph,
then at another, but did not read them; hesitated--and then irritably
turned over the leaf of paper before him, and began at a new page.)

"When I told Joshua generally what I had observed, and particularly what
I myself had seen and heard on the evening in question, he seemed
at last a little staggered, and sent for my niece, to insist on an
explanation. On his repeating to her what I had mentioned to him, she