Of her brother, personally, she remembered nothing. She only knew that she had one; that in some way he annoyed and worried her mother; that he was not highly esteemed by the Forrests, and that he was probably dead. Latterly, however, since she had gone out into the world alone to care for herself, she had often thought of him, and how delightful it would be to have a brother who was good, and kind, and true, and who would care for her as brothers sometimes care for their sisters. Occasionally, too, she had amused herself with fancying how he would look if he were alive, and how he would treat her. But she had never dreamed of any one as handsome, and polished, and elegant as Dr. Matthewson, who signed himself her brother, and had filled three or four sheets of paper with what he had to say. Very eagerly she singled out the first sheet and began: “DEAR SISTER ROSSIE:—You will pardon me for not addressing you as Miss Hastings, or even Rosamond, when I tell you I am your brother, and have always thought of you as Rossie, the little girl who, I suppose, does not remember me, and who, perhaps, has not been taught to think of me very pleasantly. But, Rossie, I am a changed man, or I would not present myself to you, a pure, innocent girl, and ask for sympathy and love. I do not believe you care to hear all the events of my life in detail, and so I shall not narrate them, but of a few things I must speak, in order that we may rightly understand each other. And first, your mother. I was a spoiled, wayward boy of sixteen when she came to us, and I was prejudiced against her by an aunt of mine, who, I think now, wanted my father herself. A stepmother was to me the worst of all evils, and I thought it was manly to tease and worry her, while I blush to say my father also treated her so shamefully that at last she fled from him, as you know, and took refuge at the Forrest House, where she finally died. “I was there once to see her, and as you may not have heard the particulars of that visit, and I wish to keep back nothing you ought to know, I will tell you about it.” Then followed a pretty truthful account of the encounter with Everard, the cowhiding, and the vow of revenge, after which the doctor spoke of his subsequent career, his change of name, his sudden conversion at a camp-meeting, his life as a clergyman in Clarence, his back-sliding, and lapse into his former evil ways, his few months’ study as a physician, his first trip to Europe, and at last his sojourn for the summer in Holburton, where he met Everard Forrest again, and was asked by Josephine to take the part of priest in the play called “Mock Marriage.”