Mr. Warren, the most acceptable line of treatment he could adopt towards a woman. Mrs. Sinclair was talking of him yesterday. I did not introduce the subject, and I kept my own opinion to myself. I should regard it as a kind of side wind of disloyalty to you, my dearest, if I allowed anybody but yourself to know the difference that exists between us on that point, to suspect that your friend was not my friend. Mrs. Sinclair spoke of him pretty roundly, and saying a great many things which were untrue, I daresay, she said one in which I believed. It was that Mr. Warren was, in her opinion, an unsafe friend and an exceedingly dangerous enemy. I pray that we may never have him for an enemy! I wish to God, and with a growing earnestness, that we had never had him for a friend! At this point in my letter, dearest Alston, I was interrupted by a visit, and now I fear that I shall have to finish this up hurriedly in time for the mail. My unexpected visitor was Thornton Carey. He sat with me a long time. I didn't like to hint to him that his coming was a little imprudent, in one sense, as curtailing my time for writing to you--that, however, I can take up again; in another sense, his visit was exceedingly apropos. You will be delighted to hear how admirably your generous intentions towards him have been realised. Can I ever thank you sufficiently for all you have done for him, indeed for every one dear to me, from my father to the merest acquaintance whom I have ever recommended to your good offices? Thornton looks remarkably well, and so far from complaining of hard work in his new office, he says he hasn't half enough to do but judging from the account he gave me of his duties, I should say most men would consider they had a tolerably fair share of labour and responsibility in his post of librarian at New Orleans. He has taken to his occupation with enthusiasm; in that respect (only) he reminded me very strongly of Tom Pinch, when he set to work so vehemently about making a catalogue of his unknown employer's books in the Temple chambers. He seems to have grown fond of the very outside of his charge; and when we were talking of our childish days together, and I reminded him of the awful quarrel we had because he tore the red-and-gold cover of my _Arabian Nights_, he regarded me with the most comical horror, as though I had suddenly dug up and brought to light the corpse of a victim, and produced it in the sight of its murderer, after the fashion of, 'You don't mean to say, Helen,' he said, 'that even in my most cub-like and uncivilised days I ever tore a book?' I laughed as I little thought I should ever laugh during your absence; but I thought we were both very near tears occasionally during our interview, for, of course, we talked of our friendlessness until we respectively found the best of all friends in you. I wonder if Thornton Carey has any chance of being a great man some day--in his own studious scientific line, I mean? How nice it