rs.--Dear Frank, I am yours always, and always most
lovingly,

GERTRUDE.

You needn't be a bit afraid but that I should be quite up
to going off if you could arrange it.

"I believe, papa," said Mrs. Traffick, on the afternoon of the day on
which this was written, "that Gertrude is thinking of doing something
wrong, and therefore I feel it to be my duty to bring you this
letter." Augusta had not been enabled to read the letter, but had
discussed with her sister the propriety of eloping. "I won't advise
it," she had said, "but, if you do, Mr. Houston should arrange to be
married at Ostend. I know that can be done." Some second thought had
perhaps told her that any such arrangement would be injurious to the
noble blood of the Traffick family, and she had therefore "felt it to
be her duty" to extract the letter from the family letter-box, and
to give it to her father. A daughter who could so excellently do her
duty would surely not be turned out before Parliament met.

Sir Thomas took the letter and said not a word to his elder child.
When he was alone he doubted. He was half-minded to send the letter
on. What harm could the two fools do by writing to each other? While
he held the strings of the purse there could be no marriage. Then he
bethought himself of his paternal authority, of the right he had to
know all that his daughter did,--and he opened the letter. "There
ought to be gentlemen who don't earn their bread!" "Ought there?"
said he to himself. If so these gentlemen ought not to come to him
for bread. He was already supporting one such, and that was quite
enough. "Mamma is quite afraid of him, and doesn't dare say a word."
That he rather liked. "I am sure he would give the money afterwards."
"I am sure he would do no such thing," he said to himself, and he
reflected that in such a condition he should rather be delighted than
otherwise in watching the impecunious importunities of his baffled
son-in-law. The next sentence reconciled his girl to him almost
entirely. "He is always so good-natured in the long run, and so
generous!" For "good-natured" he did not care much, but he liked to
be thought generous. Then he calmly tore the letter in little bits,
and threw them into the waste-paper basket.

He sat for ten minutes thinking what he had better do, finding
the task thus imposed upon him to be much more difficult than the
distribution of a loan. At last he determined that, if he did
nothing, thin