she continued, "seeking the sympathy of a young girl like yourself to
that of a mother, who has always endeavoured not only to sympathise
with, but to soothe the sorrows of her children?" Still I would not
answer, and she added, mildly, "Do you not think, Emmeline, Mary would
have been better pleased if you had written to her rather in a lighter
strain? do you not think, if you were to try and shake off these painful
fancies, you could write another and less desponding letter--one that I
might give you my full and free permission to send, which, sorry as I am
to say it, I cannot with this?"

Mild as were her words and manner, the import of what she said put the
finishing stroke to my ill-temper. "If I may not write as I like, I will
not write at all," I passionately exclaimed, and seizing the sheet
nearest to me tore it asunder, and would have done the same with the
rest, had not mamma gently laid her hand on my arm, uttering my name in
an accent of surprise and sorrow; my irritable and sinful feelings found
vent in a most violent flood of tears.

Will you not think, dearest Mary, I am writing of Caroline, and not of
myself; does it not resemble the scenes of my sister's childhood? Can
you believe that this is an account of your Emmeline, whose sweetness of
temper and gentleness of disposition you have so often extolled? But it
was I who thus forgot myself--I, who once believed nothing ever could
make me passionate or angry, and in one minute I was both--had excited
myself till I became so even against my nature, and with whom?--even my
mother, my kind, devoted mother, who has ever done so much for me, whom
in my childhood, when I knew her worth much less than I do now, I had
never caused to shed a tear. Oh, Mary, I cannot tell you what I felt the
moment those passionate words escaped me. I may truly say I did not cry
from anger, but from the most bitter, the most painful self-reproach. I