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 Clara was the
acquisition of her wealth. According to popular surmise and report, the
young lady's mental infirmity had been brought about by the persecutions
she had endured at the hands of Mrs. Brandon, with a view to force her
into a marriage she detested. The most reliable authority for the truth
of these rumors was Susan Hopley, now in the service of Lady Compton, but