"You dropped this, Ellen dear," said the voice of her cousin Emmeline at her door, ten minutes after she left the breakfast-room. "It was under the table, and I do not think you have read it; it is the inclosure I was so amused at."
"I dare say it is a letter written for some other opportunity, and forgotten to be sent; it is only a few words," replied Ellen as she looked at its length, not at its meaning, for the fearful lesson of quiet unconcern when the heart is bursting had been too early learned.
"Then I will leave you in peace: by-the-by, cousin mine, papa told me to tell you, that as the Prince William is soon going to cruise again, your answer to Edward must be ready this day week, the latest, and mamma says, if you like to write part of it now that all Edward's little love-speeches are fresh in your mind, you can do so; it is your birthday, and you may spend it as you like. How I shall enjoy making a lion of my cousin, when he comes!"--and away tripped the happy girl, singing some wild snatch of an old ballad about sailors.
Ellen shut the door, secured it, and with a lip and cheek colorless as her robe, an eye strained and bloodshot, read the following words--few indeed!
"Ellen! I am again in that villain's power, and for a sum so trifling, that it maddens me to think I can not discharge it without again appealing to you. I had resolved never to play again--and again some demon lured me to those Hells! If I do not pay him by my next receipts from home, he will expose me, and what then--disgrace, expulsion, _death_! for I will not survive it; there are easy means of self-destruction to a sailor, and who shall know but that he is accidentally drowned? You promised me to save part of every allowance, in case I needed it. If you would indeed save me, send me five-and-thirty pounds! Ellen! by some means, I _must_ have it; but breathe it to my uncle or aunt--for if _she_ knows it, _he_ will--and you will never see me more!"
For one long hour Ellen never moved. Her brain felt scorched, her limbs utterly powerless. Every word seemed to write itself in letters of fire on her heart and brain, till she could almost have screamed, from the dread agony; and then came the heavy weight, so often felt before, but never crushing every thought and energy as now, the seeming utter impossibility to comply with that fearfully urged demand. _He_ called it a sum so trifling, and _she_ felt a hundred, ay, a thousand pounds were not more difficult to obtain. She had saved, indeed, denying herself every little indulgence, every personal gratification, spending only what she was obliged, and yet compelled to let her aunt believe she had properly expended all, that she might have the means of sending him money when he demanded it, without exposing herself to doubt and displeasure as before; but in the eight months since his last call, she had only been enabled to put by fifteen pounds, not half the sum he needed. How was she to get the rest? and she had so buoyed herself with the fond hope, that even if he did write for help again, she could send it to him so easily--and now--her mind seemed actually to reel beneath the intense agony of these desperate words. She was too young, too believing, and too terror-stricken to doubt for a moment the alternative he placed before her, with a vividness, a desperation, of which he was unconscious himself. Those words spoken, would have been terrible, almost awful in one so young--though a brief interval would have sufficiently calmed both the hearer and the speaker, to satisfy that they were _but words_, and that self-destruction is never breathed, if really intended: but _written_, the writer at a distance, imagination at liberty, to heighten every terror, every reality; their reader a young loving girl, utterly ignorant of the world's ways and temptations, and the many errors to which youth is subject, but from which manhood may spring up unsullied; and so believing, almost crushed by the belief, that her brother, the only one, her own--respected, beloved, as he was said to be--had yet committed such faults, as would hurl him from his present position to the lowest depth of degradation, for what else could tempt him, to swear not to survive it? Was it marvel, that poor Ellen was only conscious that she must save him?--Again did her dying mother stand before her--again did her well-remembered voice beseech her to save him her darling, beautiful Edward, from disgrace and punishment--reiterate that her word was pledged, and she _must_ do it, and if she suffered--had she not done so from infancy--and what was her happiness to his? Define why it should be of less moment, indeed, she could not. It was the fatal influences of her childhood working alone.