His course was taken. He wrote to his brother the momentous letter, which turned the current of poor Mary's bliss. * * * * * "When you and I parted, Eugene, nearly five years ago, it was with the sole determination on my part, never again to seek communication with a man who had acted as none other, than _a brother_, could have acted, without drawing upon himself the just retribution on my part, such conduct so justly deserved, I mean the public exposure of its villainy to society--to the world. But as it was--more in sorrow than in anger--sorrow which in the estimation of those less scrupulous and sensitive than myself, might have been deemed carried to a morbid and irrational extent--in sorrow of heart, the bitterness of death could hardly surpass, sorrow and amazement that such perfidy could exist in one I had loved as my own mother's son; the impulse of my grieved and wounded spirit prompted me to act in a manner exactly the reverse. My determination had been to repair to some distant foreign land. But mere accident, or I should say, hidden Providence, ordered it otherwise. I spent the winter in a wild unfrequented part of North Wales; and on leaving that, was taken ill at a small town, some miles distant. A few weeks more and circumstances caused me to fix my wandering steps in a secluded valley, where for the few succeeding years I assisted the clergyman of the place in the duties of his profession, and in conformity with the course of conduct I was pursuing, under the name of Edward Temple. Does this give you any clue to the motive of the present unwelcome communication? Have you ever heard that unfamiliar name pass the lips of her, whom report tells me you are to make your wife--the lips, I mean, of Mary Seaham? if so as it would have been but natural, she may have further spoken, and told you of the love she had inspired in that same Edward Temple's breast; and you smiled, no doubt, in pity at the disappointed ambition of the country curate. Eugene, now indeed, I own that you have honourably won that--to which, in comparison, all that by wrong and treachery you ever sought to rob me is as dross indeed, in my estimation--the love of as pure a heart, as angel-like a spirit as ever breathed in the form of woman. But this, Eugene, must suffice you; here your triumph must end; unless, indeed, you care to prove your affection by a stronger test than I imagine it would be able to stand; for at once I come to the point, and tell you Eugene, that I cannot suffer this concerted marriage of yours to take place, without a powerful effort on my part, to avert it--to save the pure and gentle being whom I shall ever love, from the fate that marriage, I feel, must ever entail upon her.