Dearest Author:Forrester Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: about Eve. She is only strange and tiresome, and different from other girls." Mrs. Huntingtower's annoyance extended itself to Miss Baxter, and when that lady... more » came an hour later, to make her formal complaint of Eve to her mother, she treated her with some coldness, and remarked that it was a mistake to exercise too severe an espionage on young people, and that it would be wiser on occasion not to appear to notice small delinquencies. She added that it was very unfortunate Mr. Huntingtower should have found Eve in tears, as she particularly disliked his being annoyed by domestic matters. Miss Baxter was deeply injured, and her manner to her pupil was more waspish and repellent than ever; and Eve, ignorant of what her brother was doing in her behalf, and keenly alive to the increased coldness in the demeanor of her mother and sisters toward her, felt a sense of guilt, misery and loneliness, to which her momentary happiness at the tenderness of her new champion only seemed to add fresh poignancy. CHAPTER III. A CORRESPONDENCE. Ralph Huntingtower took pen in hand, and wrote to Lady Barton as follows: "My Dear Godmother:—I have a favor to ask of you, and if I had not such perfect confidence in the kindness of your heart, which makes you ever ready to sacrifice your own ease and comfort to the good of others, I should feel a little shy of making my request, for it is certain to involve trouble, without any compensating pleasure. You will be a good deal surprised, and I daresay will think to yourself that I am meddling with that which does not concern me, although I knowyou will not tell me so. To make a long story short, I have discovered that my little step-sister Eve is undergoing a small martyrdom at the hands of her governess, who is a Gorgon devoid, as far as I ca...« less