MY DEAR BOY,--How could you! Do it slyly!! Unknown to your own mother!! I could not believe it of you!!!! Take advantage of my confidence in showing you the letters of your father’s cousin, to write to himself--clandestinely!--you, who I thought had such an open character, and who ought to appreciate mine. Every one who knows me says I am a woman in ten thousand,--not for beauty and talent (though I have had my admirers for them too), but for GOODNESS I As a wife and mother, I may say I have been exemplary. I had sore trials with the dear captain--and IMMENSE temptations. But he said on his death-bed, “Jessica, you are an angel.” And I have had offers since,--IMMENSE offers,--but I devoted myself to my child, as you know. And what I have put up with, letting the first floor, nobody can tell; and only a widow’s pension,--going before a magistrate to get it paid! And to think my own child, for whom I have borne so much, should behave so cruelly to me! Clandestine! that is that which stabs me. Mrs. Inman found me crying, and said, “What is the matter?--you who are such an angel, crying like a baby!” And I could not help saying, “‘T is the serpent’s tooth, Mrs. L” What you wrote to your benefactor (and I had hoped patron) I don’t care to guess; something very rude and imprudent it must be, judging by the few lines he addressed to me. I don’t mind copying them for you to read. All my acts are aboveboard, as often and often Captain H. used to say, “Your heart is in a glass case, Jessica;” and so it is! but my son keeps his under lock and key. “Madam [this is what he writes to me], your son has thought fit to infringe the condition upon which I agreed to assist you on his behalf. I enclose a reply to himself, which I beg you will give to his own hands without breaking the seal. Since it did not seem to you indiscreet to communicate to a boy of his years letters written solely to yourself, you cannot blame me if I take your implied estimate of his capacity to judge for himself of the nature of a correspondence, and of the views and temper of, madam, your very obedient servant.” And that’s all to me.