"Give me your desk, my Clara, and I will write a line or two, that you shall copy. It must be expressed with strength and firmness, my best love, and it may prevent a repetition of this very improper request for the future." The desk was brought; and while Mrs. Cartwright prepared a second glass of negus for the vicar, who declared that the night was unusually chilly, he composed the following epistle: "Helen! "That it should have entered into your heart, into the heart of my own dear child, to wish for permission to become the guest of a family who from the hour of your late father's death has ever treated me with the most cruel and unmerited unkindness, is a mystery that I cannot understand. It was this unkindness which drove me, sooner than I could have wished to do it, to find a friend and adviser in Mr. Cartwright; and my only fear now is, that his indulgent gentleness towards my children may prevent his being so firm a support to me in the guiding them as I may sometimes require. But in the present instance I want no strength beyond my own to declare to you, that I will not permit you to remain an hour longer at Sir Gilbert Harrington's; that I command you instantly to put yourself into the carriage I send for you, and return to Cartwright Park; (for so, of course, will my residence be called for the future;) and moreover, I beg you to inform the unprincipled pair who would seduce you from your mother's roof, that if on the present or any future occasion they should persuade you to commit so great a sin, I shall take legal measures to recover the possession of your person till such time as you shall be of age; when, if unhappily evil counsellors should still have influence over you, I shall give you up to them, to penniless obscurity, to your own heart's remorse, and to that sentence of everlasting condemnation which will in such case infallibly doom you to the region where there is howling and gnashing of teeth. "As for my ward Miss Torrington, I must of course take the same summary mode of getting her again under my protection, for such time as I shall continue to be her legal guardian. "CLARA HELENA FRANCES CARTWRIGHT. "Cartwright Park, Wednesday." When this composition was completed, Mr. Cartwright turned the desk to his lady, laid a fair sheet of blank paper before her, put a pen into her hand, drew the wax-lights near her, and then set about sipping the negus she had so kindly prepared for him, without appearing to think it at all necessary to ask her opinion of the document she was about to copy.