letters--precious, precious manuscripts--it will be my painful duty, as
a chronicler of (what might well be) truth, to put the reader in
possession of one little hint, which seemed likeliest to wreck the
happiness of these two children of affection.

I am Emily's invisible friend: and as the dear girl ran to me one
morning, with tears in her eyes, to ask me what I thought of a certain
mysterious paragraph, I need not scruple to lay it straight before the
reader.

At the end of a voluminous love-letter, which I really did not think of
prying into, occurred the following postscript, evidently written at the
last moment of haste.

"Oh! my precious Emmy, I have just heard the most fearful rumour of ill
that could possibly befall us: the captain of our ship--you will
remember Captain Forbes, he knew you and the general well, he said--has
just assured me that--that--! I dare not, cannot write the awful words.
Oh! my own Emmy--Heaven grant you be my own!--pray, pray, as I will
night and day, that rumour be not true: for if it be, my love, both God
and man forbid us ever to meet again! How I wish I could explain it all,
or that I had never heard so much, or never written it here, and told it
you, though thus obscurely: for I can't destroy this letter now, the
ships are just parting company, and there is no time to write another.
Yet will I hope, love, against hope. Who knows? through God's good
mercy, it may all be cleared up still. If not--if not--strive to forget
for ever, your unhappy "CHARLES.

"Perhaps--O, glorious thought!--Nurse Mackie may know better than the
captain, after all; and yet, he seems so positive: if he is right, there