“And now, Harry, for a confession. I 'm heartily sorry for the whole of this business, and were it to be done again, nothing would tempt me to play the same part in it. I was leading the jolliest life imaginable at Cro' Martin. I had made the place and the people my own. It was a kind of existence that suited me,--sufficient of occupation, and enough of leisure. There were oddities to laugh at, eccentricities to quiz, an old lawyer to sharpen one's wits upon, and a governess--such a governess--to flirt with! Don't mistake me, Harry; it was not one of those hand-pressing, downcast-gazing, low-speaking cases in which you are such a proficient. It was far more like the approaches one might be supposed to make to a young tigress in a cage,--a creature with whom a mistake would be your ruin, and whom you always caressed with a sense of impending peril. “I told you how ably she aided me in this contest,--how she labored to obtain information--secret information--for me as to every voter in the borough. What prompted her to this course I cannot fathom. She does not appear to bear any grudge against the Martins,--she had been but a few weeks amongst them,--and is, all things considered, well treated and well received. As little was it any special favor towards myself. Indeed, on that head she will not permit me to fall into any error. I cannot suppose that with her foreign education and foreign habits she cares a jot for the small schemes and intriguings of home politics,--so what can it possibly mean? Help me to the solution of this riddle, and I 'll be more deeply your debtor than I can well say. Brought up as she has been,--and as I have told you in my last letter,--nothing would be more natural than her adoption of every prejudice of the class by whom she has been so singularly distinguished; and in this light I have always viewed her. Under the calm reserve of a most polished manner you can still detect a shrinking horror of all the vulgar association of the rank she came from. Her quiet deference, haughtier by far than the domination of those above her; the humility that no flatteries ever breached; a self-possession that never seemed so strong as when resisting the blandishments of praise,--these are strange gifts in a young girl with beauty enough to turn half the heads of half the fools we know of, and more than enough to make crazy that of him who writes this.