When Mrs. Hamilton told Ellen that her letters to her brother, and his to her, should never be subjected to any scrutiny but their own, she acted on a principle which many parents and guardians would consider as high-flown and romantic, and which she herself had most painful reason to regret--the effects, at least, but not the principle itself, for that was based on too refined a feeling to waver, even though she suffered from it. She could not bear, nor could her husband, the system which prevailed in some families of their acquaintance, that their children could neither receive nor write letters to each other, or their intimate friends, without being shown to their seniors. As for opening and reading a letter directed to one of them, before its possessor saw it, as they had seen done, it was, in their estimation, as much dishonor and as mean, as if such a thing had been done to an adult. Perfect confidence in their home they had indeed instilled, and that confidence was never withheld. There was a degree of suspicion attached to a demand always to see what a child had written or received, from which Mrs. Hamilton's pure mind actually shrunk in loathing. In the many months the Grahame family passed in London, Annie and Caroline corresponded without the least restraint: no doubt many would pronounce Mrs. Hamilton very unwise, knowing Annie so well, and trembling for Caroline as she did; but, as she told Miss Harcourt, she had some notions peculiar to herself (they always had the sanction and sympathy of her husband, however), and this was one of them. She was always pleased and interested in all that her children read to her, either from their own epistles or those they received, and if they wished it, read them herself, but she never asked to do so, and the consequence was, that the most perfect confidence was given. When Ellen and Edward parted, they were both so young, that Mr. Hamilton had hesitated as to whether his wife was quite justified in the perfect trust with which she treated them, and whether it would not be wiser to overlook their correspondence; but Mrs. Hamilton so argued that their very youth was their safeguard, that they were all in all to each other, and as such she wished them to feel they were bound by even a closer and a fonder tie than that of brother and sister under other circumstances, so won over her husband that he yielded; and from the long extracts that Ellen would read of Edward's letters to the family in general, and of her own to her aunt, he was quite satisfied as to the wisdom of his wife's judgment.