urrender her to her aunt in-law, Mrs. Brandon, of whom she seemed to
entertain an overpowering, indefinable dread. It was evident she had been
subjected to extremely brutal treatment--such as, in these days of
improved legislation in such matters, and greatly advanced knowledge of
the origin and remedy of cerebral infirmity, would not be permitted
towards the meanest human being, much less a tenderly-nurtured, delicate
female. At length, under the influence of a composing draught, she sank
gradually to sleep; and Lady Compton having determined to rescue her, if
possible, from the suspicious custody of her relatives, and naturally
apprehensive of the legal difficulties which she could not doubt would
impede the execution of her generous, if somewhat Quixotic project,
resolved on at once sending off an express for Mr. Ferret, on whose
acumen and zeal she knew she could place the fullest reliance.

Clara Brandon's simple history may be briefly summed up. She was the only
child of a Mr. Frederick Brandon, who, a widower in the second year of
his marriage, had since principally resided at the "Elms," a handsome
mansion and grounds which he had leased of the uncle of the late Sir
Harry Compton. At his decease, which occurred about two years previous to
poor Clara's escape from confinement, as just narrated, he bequeathed
his entire fortune, between two and three thousand pounds per annum,
chiefly secured on land, to his daughter; appointed his elder brother,
Major Brandon, sole executor of his will, and guardian of his child; and
in the event of her dying before she had attained her majority--of which
she wanted, at her father's death, upwards of three years--or without
lawful issue, the property was to go to the major, to be by him willed at
his pleasure. Major Brandon, whose physical and mental energies had been
prematurely broken down--he was only in his fifty-second year--either by
excess or hard service in the East, perhaps both, had married late in
life the widow of a brother officer, and the mother of a grown-up son.
The lady, a woman of inflexible will, considerable remains of a somewhat
masculine beauty, and about ten years her husband's junior, held him in a
state of thorough pupilage; and, unchecked by him, devoted all her
energies to bring about, by fair or foul means, a union between Clara and
her own son, a cub of some two or three-and-twenty years of age, whose
sole object in seconding his mother's views upon Cla