I had just retired to my apartment, when a letter was brought me which Miss Mortimer had left, with orders that it might be delivered when I retired for the night. 'Oh mercy!' cried I, 'was I not wretched enough without this new torment? But give it me. She has some right to make me miserable.' In this spirit of penance I dismissed my maid, and began to read my letter, which ran as follows:--
'When you read this letter, my dear Ellen, one circumstance may perhaps assist its influence. My counsels, however received, whether used or rejected, are now drawing to a close; and you may safely grant them the indulgence we allow to troubles which will soon cease to molest us. I know not how far this consideration may affect you, but I cannot think of it without strong emotion. I have often and deeply regretted that my usefulness to you has been so little answerable to my wishes; yet, with the sympathy which rivets our eyes on danger which we cannot avert, I would fain have lingered with you still; watching, with the same painful solicitude, the approach of evils, which I in vain implored you to avoid. But it must not be. Aware of my situation, I dare not trifle with a life which is not mine to throw away. I must leave you, my dearest child, probably for ever. I must loosen this last hold which the world has on a heart already severed from all its earliest affections. And can I quit you without one last effort for your safety;--without once again earnestly striving to rouse your watchfulness, ere you have cast away your all for trifles without use or value?
'Ellen, your mother was my first friend. We grew up together. We shared in common the sports and the improvements of youth; and common sorrows, in maturer life, formed a still stronger bond. Yet I know not if my friend herself awakened a tenderness so touching, as that which remembrance mingles with my affection for you, when your voice or your smile reminds me of what she was in her short years of youth and joy. Nor is it only in trifles such as these that the resemblance rises to endear you. You have your mother's simplicity and truth,--your mother's warm affections,--your mother's implicit confidence in the objects of her love. This last was indeed the shade, perhaps the only shade of her character. But she possessed that "alchemy divine" which could transform even her dross into gold; and what might have been her weakness became her strength, when she placed her supreme regards upon excellence supreme. The nature of your affections also seems to give their object, whatever it be, implicit influence with you; and thus it becomes doubly important that they be worthily bestowed. It is this which has made me watch, with peculiar anxiety, the channels in which they seemed inclined to flow; and lament, with peculiar bitterness, that a propensity capable of such glorious application should be lost, or worse than lost to you.