Just as I was considering the necessity of writing once more to my refractory ward, a second letter arrived from her.

She had returned at last from abroad, had suddenly changed her mind, suddenly grown sick of society, suddenly become enamored of the pleasures of retirement, and suddenly found out that the three horrid old men were three dear old men, and that six weeks' solitude at The Glen Tower was the luxury, of all others, that she languished for most.

As a necessary result of this altered state of things, she would therefore now propose to spend her allotted six weeks with her guardian.

We might certainly expect her on the twentieth of September, and she would take the greatest care to fit herself for our society by arriving in the lowest possible spirits, and bringing her own sackcloth and ashes along with her.
The first ordeal to which this alarming letter forced me to submit was the breaking of the news it contained to my two brothers.

The disclosure affected them very differently.