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MY SECRET LIFE us in the room, and I sat there reading and trembling. My mother remarked to the lady, “I hope that girl is not going wrong, she is very good looking.” Mother asked me to go out of the room, then had Charlotte up, and lectured her; afterwards Charlotte told me for the first time, that her father was annoyed because she would not marry a young man.

A young man had called at our house several times to see her; she saw him once and evaded doing so afterwards. He was the son of a well-to-do baker, a few miles from Charlotte’s home, and wished to marry her; his father was not expected to live, and the young man said he would marry her directly the father died. Her mother was mad at her refusing such a chance. Charlotte showed me his letters, which then came, and we arranged together the replies.

She went home, and came back with eyes swollen with crying, some one had written anonymously, to say she had been seen at the wax-works with a young man, evidently of position above her, and had been seen walking with a young man. The mother threatened to have a doctor examine her to see if she had been doing anything wrong, no one seemed to have suspected me; her father would have her home, her mother had had suspicion of her for some time, “The sooner you marry young Brown the better, he will have a good business, and keeps a horse and chaise, you will never have such a chance again, and it will prevent you going wrong, even if you have not already gone wrong”, said her mother.

It was a rainy night, I had met her on her return, and we both stood an hour under an umbrella, talking and crying, she saying, “I knew I should be ruined; if —121—