s my friend, and I dare say that makes me
unfit to be friends with you. You are a nobleman and he
is a tradesman; but when we knew him first he was quite
as good as we, and I believe we owe him a great deal of
money, which mamma can't pay him. I have heard mamma say
before she was angry with him, that she would have been in
the workhouse, but for them, and that Mr. Daniel Thwaite
might now be very well off, and not a working tailor at
all as Mrs. Bluestone calls him, if they hadn't given all
they had to help us. I cannot bear after that to hear them
speak of him as they do.

Of course I should like to do what mamma wants; but how
would you feel if you had promised somebody else? I do so
wish that all this might be stopped altogether. My dear
mamma will not allow me to see her; and though everybody
is very kind, I feel that I ought not to be here with Mrs.
Bluestone. Mamma talked of going abroad somewhere. I wish
she would, and take me away. I should see nobody then, and
there would be no trouble. But I suppose she hasn't got
enough money. This is a very poor letter, but I do not
know what else I can say.

Believe me to be,
My dear cousin,
Yours affectionately,

ANNA LOVEL.

Then came, in a postscript, the one thing that she had to say,--"I
think that I ought to be allowed to see Mr. Daniel Thwaite."

Lord Lovel after receiving this letter called in Bedford Square and
saw Mrs. Bluestone,--but he did not show the letter. His cousin was
out with the girls and he did not wait to see her. He merely said
that he had received a letter which had not given him much comfort.
"But I shall answer it," he said,--and the reader who has seen the
one letter shall see also the other.

Brown's Hotel, Albemarle Street,
4th November, 183--.

DEAREST ANNA,

I have received your letter and am obliged to you for it,
though there is so little in it to flatter or to satisfy
me. I will begin by assuring you that, as far as I am
concerned, I do not wish to keep you from seeing Mr.
Daniel Thwaite. I believe in my heart of hearts that if
you were now to see him often you would feel aware that
a union between you and him could not make either of you
happy. You do not even say that you think it would do so.

You defend him, as though I had accused him. I grant all
that you say in his favour. I do not doubt that his fathe