It was in the small, clear calligraphy of Basil Bainrothe, before described; characterized, I believe, as a backhand--and thus it ran: "You are right--it was a master-stroke! Keep them in ignorance of each other, and all will yet go well. I sail to-morrow, and have only time to inclose this with a pencilled line. Try and head them at New York. My first idea was the best--my reason I will explain later. "Yours truly, "B.B. "N.B.--The man could not have played into our hands better than by taking up such an impression. There is no one there to undeceive him." THE LETTER. "My Miriam: Your note, through the hands of Mr. Gregory, has been received--read, noted, pondered over with pain and amazement. The avowal of your name so uselessly withheld from me, lets in a whole flood of light, blinding and dazzling, too, on a subject that fills me with infinite solicitude. "There have been strange reserves between us that never ought to have existed, on my part as well as yours. I should have told you that I once had a half-sister, called Constance Glen--older than myself by many years--who married during my long absence from our native land a gentleman much older than herself, an Englishman by the name of Monfort, and, after giving birth to a daughter, died suddenly. These particulars I gathered from strangers, but there were many wanting which you can best supply. I know that this gentleman had a daughter, or daughters, by an earlier marriage--and I can find no clew to the date of my sister's marriage--which might in itself determine the possible age of her own daughter. That this child survived I have painful cause to remember. I had sustained shipwreck, and was in abeyance for clothes and money both, when it occurred to me to call on my brother-in-law, present to him my credentials, and remain a few days at his house as his guest, in the enjoyment of my sister's society, until my needs could be supplied from certain resources at a distance. The reception I met with from his elder daughter, and the information she haughtily gave me, determined my course. I sought no more the inhospitable roof of Mr. Monfort, to find shelter beneath which I had forfeited all claim by the death of my sister, then first suddenly revealed to me. Her child, I was told, had been recently injured by burning and could not be seen, even by so near a relative, and the manner of the young lady, whom I now identify as Evelyn Monfort, was such as to lead me at the time to believe this a mere excuse or evasion, which I did not seek to oppose.