"It was at that moment I felt the first doubts of the truth of the doctrine I had imbibed from him. For himself I had long felt the most profound contempt; but I had hitherto shrunk from the impiety of confounding the doctrine and the teacher. Something artificial and forced in his manner recalled by the force of contrast the voice and look of our dear Mr. Wallace; and then came the bold but blessed thought that the awful dogmas by which he had kept my soul in thrall might be as false and worthless as himself. My recovery from my mental malady may be dated from that hour. Every day that has passed since has led me back nearer and nearer, I hope, to the happy state (of religious feeling at least) in which Mr. Cartwright found me. But the more fully I recover my senses, the more fully I become aware of the sad change he has wrought in every thing else. Not only do we all creep like permitted slaves through the house that we once felt to be our own, but he has stolen our mother from us. Poor, poor mamma! how dearly did she love us! how dearly did we love her! Where is the feeling gone? She has never quarrelled with us; with me, particularly, she has never expressed herself displeased in any way;--and yet her love seems blighted and dried up, as if some poisonous breath had blasted it;--and so it has--placid and fair as is the outward seeming of this hateful man, I question not but every hour brings forth some sorry trick to draw her farther from us. Poor, poor mamma! I know this cannot last; and when she finds him out--how dreadful will her feelings be! "Then, too, I have another sorrow, my dear Mary, which tarnishes, though it cannot destroy, the joy of my return to reason. While the fit lasted, I believed it a part of my dark duty to keep Helen and Rosalind, and our poor exiled Charles, as much at a distance from me as possible; and now I hardly dare to hope that this can ever be quite forgotten by them. I have not courage to enter with them into an explanation as full as this which I have now given you; yet, till I do this, I cannot hope that they will either understand or forgive me.