he, with
a half scornful smile. "I know the very tone and style of it, and I
recognise the pluck with which such a man, when a thousand miles off,
dares to address one like myself."

"Read it, though; let me hear his own words!" cried she.

"I'm not impatient for it," said he; "I have had a sufficient dose
of bitters this morning, and I'd just as soon spare myself the acrid
petulance of this poor creature."

"You are very provoking, I must say," said she, angrily, and turned away
towards the house. Calvert watched her till she disappeared behind a
copse, and then hastily broke open the letter.

"Middle Temple, Saturday.

"Sir--My father has forwarded to me a letter which, with
very questionable good taste, you addressed to him. The very
relations which subsisted between us when we parted, might
have suggested a more delicate course on your part. Whatever
objections I might then, however, have made to your
interference in matters personal to myself, have now become
something more than mere objections, and I flatly declare
that I will not listen to one word from a man whose name is
now a shame and a disgrace throughout Europe. That you
may quit the roof which has sheltered you hitherto without
the misery of exposure, I have forborne in my letter to
narrate the story which is on every tongue here; but, as
the price of this forbearance, I desire and I exact that you
leave the villa on the day you receive this, and cease from
that day forth to hold any intercourse with the family who
reside in it. If I do not, therefore, receive a despatch by
telegraph, informing me that you accede to these conditions,
I will forward by the next post the full details which the
press of England is now giving of your infamous conduct and
of the legal steps which are to be instituted against you.

"Remember distinctly, Sir, that I am only in this pledging
myself for that short interval of time which will suffer you
to leave the house of those who offered you a refuge against
calamity--not crime--and whose shame would be overwhelming
if they but knew the character of him they sheltered. You
are to leave before night-fall of the day this reaches, and
never to return. You are to abstain from all correspondence.
I make no conditions as to future acquaintanceship, because
I know that were