not be tainted
by loose conversation of any kind. If you allow yourself to doubt that
my husband was Anne's father, you personally insult me in the grossest
manner. If you have felt, and if you still continue to feel, an
unhallowed curiosity on this subject, I recommend you, in your own
interests, to check it at once, and for ever. On this side of the
grave, Mr. Hartright, whatever may happen on the other, THAT curiosity
will never be gratified.

Perhaps, after what I have just said, you will see the necessity of
writing me an apology. Do so, and I will willingly receive it. I will,
afterwards, if your wishes point to a second interview with me, go a
step farther, and receive you. My circumstances only enable me to
invite you to tea--not that they are at all altered for the worse by
what has happened. I have always lived, as I think I told you, well
within my income, and I have saved enough, in the last twenty years, to
make me quite comfortable for the rest of my life. It is not my
intention to leave Welmingham. There are one or two little advantages
which I have still to gain in the town. The clergyman bows to me--as
you saw. He is married, and his wife is not quite so civil. I propose
to join the Dorcas Society, and I mean to make the clergyman's wife bow
to me next.

If you favour me with your company, pray understand that the
conversation must be entirely on general subjects. Any attempted
reference to this letter will be quite useless--I am determined not to
acknowledge having written it. The evidence has been destroyed in the
fire, I know, but I think it desirable to err on the side of caution,
nevertheless.

On this account no names are mentioned here, nor is any signature
attached to these lines: the handwriting is disguised throughout, and I
mean to deliver the letter myself, under circumstances which will
prevent all fear of its being traced to my house. You can have no
possible cause to complain of these precautions, seeing that they do
not affect the information I here communicate, in consideration of the
special indulgence which you have deserved at my hands. My hour for
tea is half-past five, and my buttered toast waits for nobody.

THE STORY CONTINUED BY WALTER HARTRIGHT

I

My first impulse, after reading Mrs. Catherick's extraordinary
narrative, was to destroy it. The hardened shameless depravity of the
whole composition, from beginning to end--the atrocious perversity of