are, my dear sister. If you have suppressed any
letters to him, you may have done yourself a great injury; and, if I
know anything of Arthur's spirit, may cause a difference between him and
you, which you'll rue all your life--a difference that's a dev'lish deal
more important, my good madam, than the little--little--trumpery cause
which originated it."

"There was only one letter," broke out Helen,--"only a very little
one--only a few words. Here it is--Oh--how can you, how can you speak
so?"

When the good soul said "only a very little one," the Major could not
speak at all, so inclined was he to laugh, in spite of the agonies of
the poor soul before him, and for whom he had a hearty pity and liking
too. But each was looking at the matter with his or her peculiar eyes
and views of morals, and the Major's morals, as the reader knows, were
not those of an ascetic.

"I recommend you," he gravely continued, "if you can, to seal it
up--those letters ain't unfrequently sealed with wafers--and to put it
amongst Pen's other letters, and let him have them when he calls for
them Or if we'll can't seal it, we mistook it for a bill."

"I can't tell my son a lie," said the widow. It had been put silently
into the letter-box two days previous to their departure from the
Temple, and had been brought to Mrs. Pendennis by Martha. She had never
seen Fanny's handwriting, of course; but when the letter was put into
her hands she knew the author at once. She had been on the watch for
that letter every day since Pen had been ill. She had opened some of his
other letters because she wanted to get at that one. She had the horrid
paper poisoning her bag at that moment. She took it out and offered it
to her brother-in-law.

"Arther Pendennis, Esq.," he read in a timid little sprawling
handwriting, and with a sneer on his face. "No, my dear, I won't
read any more. But you who have read it may tell me what the letter
contains--only prayers for his health in bad spelling, you say--and a
desire to see him? Well--there's no harm in that. And as you ask me--"
Here the Major began to look a little queer for his own part, and put on
his demure look--"as you ask me, my dear, for information, why, I don't
mind telling you that--ah--that--Morgan, my man, has made some inquiries
regarding this affair, and that--my friend Doctor Goodenough also
looked into it--and it appears that this person was greatly smitten with
Arthur; that he paid for her and t