to learn anything from
_him_. Indeed, he never so much as spoke of an incident which confined
him two days to his room and five days to the house; but, as if bent on
exasperation, redoubled his kind inquiries about your daughter, who was
now, as she said, too ill to leave her room.

"No other course was then open to me than to write the present letter
to you and another to my brother-in-law. He, at least, I am determined,
shall know something of the young lady with whom he wishes to share his
fortune, though I trust that a minister of the Gospel will have no need
of any promptings of mine to prevent such a casualty. My last words, on
parting with your daughter, were to ask if the man I saw that night was
the same who had called to see her, and her reply was, 'Yes, the same.'
I will not disguise that she had the grace to cry as she said it.

"That she is never to return here, I need not say. Ay, more than that;
no reference to me will be responded to in terms that can serve her.
But this is not all. I require that you will send, and send open for my
inspection, such a letter to Mr. S. M'Gruder as may finally put an end
to any engagement, and declare that, from the circumstances now known
to you, you could neither expect, or even desire, that he would make
her his wife. Lastly, I demand--and I am in a position to enforce a
demand--that you do not communicate with my husband at all in this
affair; sufficient unpleasantness and distrust having been already
caused by our unhappy relations with your family."

A few moral reflections closed the epistle. They were neither very
novel nor very acute, but they embodied the sense of disappointment
experienced by one who little thought, in taking a teacher from the
manse of a minister, she was incurring a peril as great as if she had
sent over to France for the latest refinement in Parisian depravity.
"Keep her at home with yourself, Dr. Stewart," wrote she, "unless
the time comes when the creature she called Tony may turn up as a
respectable man, and be willing to take her." And with a gracefully
expressed hope that Dolly's ill health might prove seasonable for
self-examination and correction, she signed herself, "Your compassionate
friend, Martha M'Gruder."

"What do you say to that, Mrs. Butler? Did ever you read as much cruelty
in pen and ink, I ask you? Did you ever believe that the mother of
children could write to a father of his own daughter in such terms as
these?"