balance, and I pronounced a few
sentences sharply and rapidly, which struck them all dumb. Papa was
greatly horrified also, but I don't regret it."

On her return from this short visit to her friend, she travelled with a
gentleman in the railway carriage, whose features and bearing betrayed
him, in a moment, to be a Frenchman. She ventured to ask him if such was
not the case; and, on his admitting it, she further inquired if he had
not passed a considerable time in Germany, and was answered that he had;
her quick ear detected something of the thick guttural pronunciation,
which, Frenchmen say, they are able to discover even in the grandchildren
of their countrymen who have lived any time beyond the Rhine. Charlotte
had retained her skill in the language by the habit of which she thus
speaks to M. Heger:--

"Je crains beaucoup d'oublier le francais--j'apprends tous les jours
une demie page de francais par coeur, et j'ai grand plaisir a
apprendre cette lecon, Veuillez presenter a Madame l'assurance de mon
estime; je crains que Maria-Louise et Claire ne m'aient deja oubliees;
mais je vous reverrai un jour; aussitot que j'aurais gagne assez
d'argent pour alter a Bruxelles, j'y irai."

And so her journey back to Haworth, after the rare pleasure of this visit
to her friend, was pleasantly beguiled by conversation with the French
gentleman; and she arrived at home refreshed and happy. What to find
there?

It was ten o'clock when she reached the parsonage. Branwell was there,
unexpectedly, very ill. He had come home a day or two before, apparently
for a holiday; in reality, I imagine, because some discovery had been
made which rendered his absence imperatively desirable. The day of
Charlotte's return, he had received a letter from Mr. ---, sternly
dismissing him, intimating that his proceedings were discovered,
characterising them as bad beyond expression, and charging him, on pain
of exposure, to break off immediately, and for ever, all communication
with every member of the family.

Whatever may have been the nature and depth of Branwell's sins,--whatever
may have been his temptation, whatever his guilt,--there is no doubt of
the suffering which his conduct entailed upon his poor father and his
innocent sisters. The hopes and plans they had cherished long, and
laboured hard to fulfil, were cruelly frustrated; henceforward their days
were embittered and the natural rest of their nights dest