“I intend this letter to be read after my death, and I purpose calling it plainly a Justification¹ of my conduct towards my Niece. Not because I think my conduct wants any excuse—but because others, ignorant of my true motives², may think that my actions want justifying³, and may wickedly condemn⁴ me unless I make some such statement in my own defense⁵ as the present. There may still be living one member of my late brother’s family, whose voice would, I feel sure, be raised against me for what I have done. The relation to whom I refer has been—”

(Here Mat, who had read carefully thus far, grew impatient, and growling⁶ out some angry words, guided himself hastily down the letter with his finger till he arrived at the second paragraph.)

“—It was in the April month of 1827 that the villain⁷ who was the ruin of my niece, and the dishonor of the once respectable family to which she belonged, first came to Dibbledean. He took the little four room cottage called Jay’s Cottage, which was then to be let furnished, and which stands out of the town about a quarter of a mile down Church-lane. He called himself Mr. Carr, and the few letters that came to him were directed to ‘Arthur Carr, Esq.’

“He was quite a young man,—I should say not more than four or five and twenty—very quiet mannered and delicate—or rather effeminate looking, as I thought—for he wore his hair quite long over his shoulders, in the foreign way, and had a clear, soft complexion⁸, almost like a woman’s. Though he appeared to be a gentleman, he always kept out of the way of making acquaintances among the respectable families about Dibbledean. He had no friends of his own to come and see him that I heard of, except an old gentleman who might have been his father, and who came once or twice. His own account of himself was, that he came to Jay’s Cottage for quiet, and

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