Read it through once

This letter stands to the lasting credit of its writer and affords ample proof of his steadfast and unflinching devotion to his trust, failing which the tragedy of Miss Mitford’s life would have been deeper than it was. He alone had the power of drawing out the best that was in Miss Mitford, in getting her to express the moral and spiritual side of her nature. Art, literature, the Drama she could talk and write upon to other people, but it was to William Harness that she would pour out her convictions on the deeper things of life. He sent her a book of his sermons, and although it reached her at midnight (having been conveyed from her friend by Dr. Milman to her father, whom he met at a dinner-party), she sat far into the night, reading and studying it, and inditing a reply at three o’clock in the morning while the mood was hot upon her.