how
strangely unkind not to answer those motherly and anxious letters, sent
to their first known stage, Salt hill, and thereafter to be forwarded.

O, cold continued crime! Bad man, bad man, thy mother's own hand-writing
shall plead against thee at the last dread day. For those coveted
letters of affection, often sent on both those loving parts, had been
regularly and ruthlessly intercepted, opened, mocked, and burnt! How
could the man have stood case-proof against those letters--his mother's
anxious outbursts of affection towards a lost, an innocent, a
calumniated sister? For selfishness had dried up in that hard and wily
man all the milk of human kindness.

And our loving pair, upon their travels, were as much hurt and surprised
at this long silence as poor Lady Dillaway herself: it was most
mysterious, inexplicable. The only letter they had received ever since
they had left home was one--only one, from John, which had frightened
them exceedingly. Some practical joker (the bridesmaid's brother was
suspected), by way of giving Maria a present on her approaching wedding,
as it would seem, had cleverly imitated her father's hand-writing,
and--that letter was a forgery! to every body's great amazement. Nobody
could, according to his own account, be kinder than John, who had done
more than mortal things to appease his father; but the old man remained
implacable. It was a meanly-contrived clandestine match, he said; and he
never intended to set eyes on them again! As for John, he in that letter
had strongly counselled them to keep away, and trust to him for bringing
his father round. In the midst of their terrible dilemma, kind brother
John seemed as an angel sent by Heaven to assist them.

Dear children of affection and calamity! how innocently did they walk
into the snare; and how closely doth the wicked man draw his toils
around them. Who can accuse them of any wrong (the hopefulness of love
considered) in point either of honour or duty? And shall they not be
righted at the last? It may be so--it shall be so: but Holy Providence
hath purposes of good in plunging those twin wedded hearts deep beneath
the billows of earthly destitution. The wicked must prosper for a while,
in this as in a million other cases, and the good for their season
struggle with adversity; that the one may be destroyed for ever, and the
others may add to this world's wealth the incalculable riches of
another.

They had spent the few first weeks