It is needless to describe, at any length, the impression which these lines produced on the doctor. If he had heard what Emily had heard at the time of her aunt’s last illness, he would have called to mind Miss Letitia’s betrayal of her interest in some man unknown, whom she believed to have been beguiled by Miss Jethro--and he would have perceived that the vindictive hatred, thus produced, must have inspired the letter of denunciation which the schoolmistress had acknowledged. He would also have inferred that Miss Letitia’s inquiries had proved her accusation to be well founded--if he had known of the new teacher’s sudden dismissal from the school. As things were, he was merely confirmed in his bad opinion of Miss Jethro; and he was induced, on reflection, to keep his discovery to himself. “If poor Miss Emily saw the old lady exhibited in the character of an informer,” he thought, “what a blow would be struck at her innocent respect for the memory of her aunt!” CHAPTER XIX. SIR JERVIS REDWOOD. In the meantime, Emily, left by herself, had her own correspondence to occupy her attention. Besides the letter from Cecilia (directed to the care of Sir Jervis Redwood), she had received some lines addressed to her by Sir Jervis himself. The two inclosures had been secured in a sealed envelope, directed to the cottage. If Alban Morris had been indeed the person trusted as messenger by Sir Jervis, the conclusion that followed filled Emily with overpowering emotions of curiosity and surprise. Having no longer the motive of serving and protecting her, Alban must, nevertheless, have taken the journey to Northumberland. He must have gained Sir Jervis Redwood’s favor and confidence--and he might even have been a guest at the baronet’s country seat--when Cecilia’s letter arrived. What did it mean? Emily looked back at her experience of her last day at school, and recalled her consultation with Alban on the subject of Mrs. Rook. Was he still bent on clearing up his suspicions of Sir Jervis’s housekeeper? And, with that end in view, had he followed the woman, on her return to her master’s place of abode? Suddenly, almost irritably, Emily snatched up Sir Jervis’s letter. Before the doctor had come in, she had glanced at it, and had thrown it aside in her impatience to read what Cecilia had written. In her present altered frame of mind, she was inclined to think that Sir Jervis might be the more interesting correspondent of the two. On returning to his letter, she was disappointed at the outset. In the first place, his handwriting was so abominably bad that she was obliged to guess at his meaning. In the second place, he never hinted at the circumstances under which Cecilia’s letter had been confided to the gentleman who had left it at her door. She would once more have treated the baronet’s communication with contempt--but for the discovery that it contained an offer of employment in London, addressed to herself.