“No, papa!” she gasped. “Ellen! Ellen! come upstairs—I’m sick!”

I obeyed her summons, and accompanied her out.

“Oh, Ellen! you have got them,” she commenced immediately, dropping on her knees, when we were enclosed alone. “Oh, give them to me, and I’ll never, never do so again! Don’t tell papa. You have not told papa, Ellen? say you have not? I’ve been exceedingly naughty, but I won’t do it any more!”

With a grave severity in my manner I bade her stand up.

“So,” I exclaimed, “Miss Catherine, you are tolerably far on, it seems: you may well be ashamed of them! A fine bundle of trash you study in your leisure hours, to be sure: why, it’s good enough to be printed! And what do you suppose the master will think when I display it before him? I hav’n’t shown it yet, but you needn’t imagine I shall keep your ridiculous secrets. For shame! and you must have led the way in writing such absurdities: he would not have thought of beginning, I’m certain.”

“I didn’t! I didn’t!” sobbed Cathy, fit to break her heart. “I didn’t once think of loving him till—”

“Loving!” cried I, as scornfully as I could utter the word. “Loving! Did anybody ever hear the like! I might just as well talk of loving the miller who comes once a year to buy our corn. Pretty loving, indeed! and both times together you have seen Linton hardly four hours in your life! Now here is the babyish trash. I’m going with it to the library; and we’ll see what your father says to such loving.”

She sprang at her precious epistles, but I held them above my head; and then she poured out further frantic entreaties that I would burn them—do anything rather than show them. And being really fully as much inclined to laugh as scold—for I esteemed it all girlish vanity—I at length relented in a measure, and asked,—“If I consent to burn them, will you promise faithfully neither to send nor receive a letter again, nor a book (for I perceive you have sent him books), nor locks of hair, nor rings, nor playthings?”

“We don’t send playthings,” cried Catherine, her pride overcoming her shame.

“Nor anything at all, then, my lady?” I said. “Unless you will, here I go.”

“I promise, Ellen!” she cried, catching my dress. “Oh, put them in the fire, do, do!”

But when I proceeded to open a place with the poker the sacrifice was too painful to be borne. She earnestly supplicated that I would spare her one or two.

“One or two, Ellen, to keep for Linton’s sake!”

I unknotted the handkerchief, and commenced dropping them in from an angle, and the flame curled up the chimney.