for your interference. It was
addressed to Miss Garth, on paper with the deepest mourning-border round
it; and the writer was the same man who followed us on our way home from
a walk one day last spring--Captain Wragge. His object appears to be to
assert once more his audacious claim to a family connection with my poor
mother, under cover of a letter of condolence; which it is an
insolence in such a person to have written at all. He expresses as much
sympathy--on his discovery of our affliction in the newspaper--as if he
had been really intimate with us; and he begs to know, in a postscript
(being evidently in total ignorance of all that has really happened),
whether it is thought desirable that he should be present, among the
other relatives, at the reading of the will! The address he gives, at
which letters will reach him for the next fortnight, is, 'Post-office,
Birmingham.' This is all I have to tell you on the subject. Both the
letter and the writer seem to me to be equally unworthy of the slightest
notice, on our part or on yours.

"After breakfast Magdalen left us, and went by herself into the
morning-room. The weather being still showery, we had arranged that
Francis Clare should see her in that room, when he presented himself to
take his leave. I was upstairs when he came; and I remained upstairs
for more than half an hour afterward, sadly anxious, as you may well
believe, on Magdalen's account.

"At the end of the half-hour or more, I came downstairs. As I reached
the landing I suddenly heard her voice, raised entreatingly, and calling
on him by his name--then loud sobs--then a frightful laughing and
screaming, both together, that rang through the house. I instantly ran
into the room, and found Magdalen on the sofa in violent hysterics, and
Frank standing staring at her, with a lowering, angry face, biting his
nails.

"I felt so indignant--without knowing plainly why, for I was ignorant,
of course, of what had passed at the interview--that I took Mr. Francis
Clare by the shoulders and pushed him out of the room. I am careful
to tell you how I acted toward him, and what led to it; because I
understand that he is excessively offended with me, and that he is
likely to mention elsewhere what he calls my unladylike violence toward
him. If he should mention it to you, I am anxious to acknowledge, of my
own accord, that I forgot myself--not, I hope you will think, without
some provocation.

"I pushed him into th