age for passionate affection, and would infallibly be courteous and kind.
She was rich. We might count on her to watch over him carefully. Of
course, with such a wife, he would sink to a secondary social sphere; was
it to be regretted if he did? The letter was a plea for my own interests,
barely veiled.

At the moment of writing it, and moreover when I treated my father with
especial coldness, my heart was far less warm in the contemplation of its
pre-eminent aim than when I was suffering him to endanger it, almost
without a protest. Janet and a peaceful Riversley, and a life of quiet
English distinction, beckoned to me visibly, and not hatefully. The image
of Ottilia conjured up pictures of a sea of shipwrecks, a scene of
immeasurable hopelessness. Still, I strove toward that. My strivings were
against my leanings, and imagining the latter, which involved no
sacrifice of the finer sense of honour, to be in the direction of my
lower nature, I repelled them to preserve a lofty aim that led me through
questionable ways.

'Can it be you, Harry,' my aunt Dorothy's reply ran (I had anticipated
her line of reasoning, though not her warmth), 'who advise him to this
marriage from a motive so inexplicably unworthy? That you will repay her
the money, I do not require your promise to assure me. The money is
nothing. It is the prospect of her life and fortune which you are
consenting, if not urging him, to imperil for your own purposes. Are you
really prepared to imitate in him, with less excuse for doing it, the
things you most condemn? Let it be checked at the outset. It cannot be. A
marriage of inclination on both sides, prudent in a worldly sense, we
might wish for him, perhaps, if he could feel quite sure of himself. His
wife might persuade him not to proceed in his law-case. There I have long
seen his ruin. He builds such expectations on it! You speak of something
worse than a mercenary marriage. I see this in your handwriting!--your
approval of it! I have to check the whisper that tells me it reads like a
conspiracy. Is she not a simpleton? Can you withhold your pity? and
pitying, can you possibly allow her to be entrapped? Forgive my seeming
harshness. I do not often speak to my Harry so. I do now because I must
appeal to you, as the one chiefly responsible, on whose head the whole
weight of a dreadful error will fall. Oh! my dearest, be guided by the
purity of your feelings to shun doubtful means. I have hopes that after