She ought to have her cruel behavior to you pointed out to her." Sophia did her duty.

She wrote a very clever letter, which really did make both her mother and sister wretchedly uncomfortable.

Charlotte held it in her hand with a heartache, wondering whether she had indeed been as envious and unjust and unkind as Sophia felt her to have been; and Mrs.Sandal buried her face in her sofa pillow, and had a cry over her supposed partiality and want of true motherly feeling.

"They had been so misunderstood, Julius and she,--wilfully misunderstood, she feared; and they were being driven to a foreign land, a deadly foreign land, because Charlotte and Stephen had raised against them a social hatred they had not the heart to conquer.

If they defended themselves, they must accuse those of their own blood and house, and they were not mean enough to do such a thing as that.