and his guilt brought home to him. Again and again I implore you to leave him now entirely to me. Go up to his room no more, or you may mar the steps I have already taken, and am about to take. I have told you that, when I was living in my dear father's house, I had in my employ a detective who tracked the shameless woman to an appointment with Pelham, and through whose instrumentality I hoped to open my father's eyes to the true character of the wife who was disgracing him. You know how she worked upon my father's deep love for her, and frustrated my just design. The use of the detective was, and is, revolting to me, but there was (and to a certain extent is) no other way of obtaining evidence. This detective, with men under him, is again in my employ. It was he who brought my Statement to you when I lately returned from Liverpool. Mr. Pelham, in his own proper person, and in the disguise he has assumed, is now under strict surveillance; and the partner of his guilt, my father's widow, is also being watched. Not a movement outside their houses will escape notice; nor shall they escape, in their own persons, if they make the attempt. I think something of the kind is meditated, for Mrs. Holdfast--it maddens me to think that I must call her by the name which I hope you will one day bear--is converting into money all my father's property, and she is not doing this without a motive. Let her beware! The sword is hanging over her head, and may fall at any moment. I can imagine no greater misery for this woman than to be thrust upon the world in a state of poverty. For even if she could be proved guilty of nothing but love's treachery as regards my father, I shall have no pity for her. She has tasted the pleasures of wealth, and it would poison all her after-life to be deprived of it. I write bitterly, and I do not attempt to disguise my feelings. The face of this woman--fair, alas! but that is one of the mockeries of nature--as it rises before me, seems almost to blight the sweet beauty which lies in innocence, truth and purity. Forgive me for my bitterness; I have suffered much; had it not been for you I should have lost all faith in goodness. How much I owe you! "It does not surprise me to learn, through Fanny's reading of the letter which Mr. Pelham gave her to deliver to Mrs. Holdfast, that Pelham and she are at variance upon monetary matters. Such natures as theirs are of necessity grasping and avaricious, and although they are bound to each other by the closest and most dangerous ties, there cannot possibly be harmony between them; experience has made each suspicious of the other, and has shown them, through the mirror of their own souls, how little of truth and honesty they can expect from each other. Had my father died a natural death, I should have been content to leave them to their own punishment--bitterer than any enemy could have made it for them.