“If there is any thing wanting for the convenience of your and Lady Matilda’s departure, you have but to order it, and it is at your service—I mean likewise any cash you may have occasion for. I should presume to add my opinion where you might best take up your abode; but with such advice as you will have from Mr. Sandford, mine would be but assuming. “I would also have waited upon you, Madam, and have delivered myself the substance of this letter; but I am an old man, and the changes I have been witness to in my Lord’s house since I first lived in it, has encreased my age many years; and I have not the strength to see you upon this occasion. I loved my deceased Lady—I love my Lord—and I love their child—nay, so I am sure does my Lord himself; but there is no accounting for his resolutions, or for the alteration his disposition has lately undergone. “I beg pardon, Madam, for this long intrusion, and am, and ever will be, (while you and my Lord’s daughter are so) your afflicted humble servant, “Robert Giffard. “Elmwood House, “Sept. 12.” When this letter was brought to Miss Woodley, she knew what it contained before she opened it, and therefore took it with an air of resignation—yet though she guessed the momentous part of its contents, she dreaded in what words it might be related; and having now no essential good to expect, hope, that will never totally expire, clung at this crisis to little circumstances, and she hoped most fervently, the terms of the letter might not be harsh, but that Lord Elmwood had delivered his commands in gentle language. The event proved he had; and lost to every important comfort, she felt grateful to him for this small one. Matilda, too, was cheered by this letter, for she expected something worse; and the last line, in which Giffard said he knew “His Lordship loved her,” she thought repaid her for the purport of the other part. Sandford was not so easily resigned or comforted—he walked about the room when the letter was shewn to him—called it cruel—stifled his tears, and wished to show his resentment only—but the former burst through all his endeavours, and he sunk into grief. Nor was the fortitude of Matilda, which came to her assistance on the first onset of this trial, sufficient to arm her, when the moment came she was to quit the house—her father’s house—never to see that, or him again. When word was brought that the carriage was at the door, which was to convey her from all she held so dear, and she saw before her the prospect of a long youthful and healthful life, in which misery and despair were all she could discern; that despair seized her at once, and gaining courage from it, she cried,