ot begin and
end with the risk she is running at present.

"There has been something weighing on her mind ever since we left
Combe-Raven--weighing far more heavily for the last six weeks than at
first. Until the period when Francis Clare left England, I am persuaded
she was secretly sustained by the hope that he would contrive to see her
again. From the day when she knew that the measures you had taken for
preventing this had succeeded; from the day when she was assured that
the ship had really taken him away, nothing has roused, nothing has
interested her. She has given herself up, more and more hopelessly, to
her own brooding thoughts; thoughts which I believe first entered
her mind on the day when the utter ruin of the prospects on which her
marriage depended was made known to her. She has formed some desperate
project of contesting the possession of her father's fortune with
Michael Vanstone; and the stage career which she has gone away to try is
nothing more than a means of freeing herself from all home dependence,
and of enabling her to run what mad risks she pleases, in perfect
security from all home control. What it costs me to write of her in
these terms, I must leave you to imagine. The time has gone by when
any consideration of distress to my own feelings can weigh with me.
Whatever I can say which will open your eyes to the real danger, and
strengthen your conviction of the instant necessity of averting it, I
say in despite of myself, without hesitation and without reserve.

"One word more, and I have done.

"The last time you were so good as to come to this house, do you
remember how Magdalen embarrassed and distressed us by questioning
you about her right to bear her father's name? Do you remember her
persisting in her inquiries, until she had forced you to acknowledge
that, legally speaking, she and her sister had No Name? I venture to
remind you of this, because you have the affairs of hundreds of clients
to think of, and you might well have forgotten the circumstance.
Whatever natural reluctance she might otherwise have had to deceiving
us, and degrading herself, by the use of an assumed name, that
conversation with you is certain to have removed. We must discover her
by personal description--we can trace her in no other way.

"I can think of nothing more to guide your decision in our deplorable
emergency. For God's sake, let no expense and no efforts be spared. My
letter ought to reach you by ten o