Though the writer of it was his sister Kate, she had not been privileged to address it to his private lodgings.

He read it very quickly, running rapidly over its contents, and then threw it aside from him as though it were of no moment, keeping, however, an enclosure in his hand.

And yet the letter was of much moment, and made him think deeply.

"If I did it at all," said he, "it would be more with the object of cutting him out than with any other." The reader will hardly require to be told that the him in question was John Grey, and that Kate's letter was one instigating her brother to renew his love affair with Alice.

And Vavasor was in truth well inclined to renew it, and would have begun the renewing it at once, had he not doubted his power with his cousin.