's
letter was as follows:--

"My dear Lovell,

"A circumstance which I can neither explain nor dwell upon,
and which had better remain buried in oblivion, has made a
further residence at Elmsley so painful to me, that I have
come to the decision of going abroad immediately, and of
remaining absent for a year at least. To your sister I have
written to announce my intentions, and at the same time to
express my deep sense of her own and my uncle's constant
kindness to me. To you I do not wish to disguise the fact,
that my resolution is not founded on _caprice_,--that I have a
_reason_ for what I do, however unnecessary it is to state
what that reason is. Our friendship makes it incumbent upon me
to be so far explicit; but I beg that you will never allude,
by word or by letter, to the cause of my absence, and that you
will never question me on the subject. I have left in my room
a book which I wish you to give Ellen from me. I dislike
leave-takings, and shall therefore proceed to Dover from
hence, without returning again to Elmsley.

"Sincerely yours,

"Edward Middleton."

It was as I had thought, then. There was the secret I had so
anxiously sought to discover. He, Edward Middleton, was the
possessor of mine! He had never, then, since the day of
Julia's death, looked upon me, or thought of me, but as the
murderer of his little cousin--as a wretch whom nothing but
his forbearance could keep in the house, from which she ought
to have been turned out with horror and execration. He had,
however, forborne to ruin, to destroy me; and a feeling of
tenderness stole over my heart at the thought. But that
paper--that dreadful paper; was that his last farewell to me?
Did he wish to make me feel that I was in his power?--that he
held the sword of vengeance suspended over my head, and that
present, or absent, I was to tremble at his name? This was
unlike Edward Middleton; this was unworthy of him. He should
have come to me and charged me with my crime. He should have
stood before me with that stern commanding brow, and
pronounced my sentence; and I would have knelt to him, and
submitted to any penance, to any expiation he might have
enjoined; but an unsigned, an unavowed threat, a common
anonymous letter--away with it! away with it! Base, miserable
device for him to resort to! My very soul sickened at the
thought; and in the midst of all my other sufferings, I
suffered at feeling how low he had fallen in my estimation.