you to judge,--as is also that question of my children who, of
course, should you become my wife will be to some extent a care
upon your shoulders. As this is all very serious you will not, I
hope, think me wanting in gallantry if I say that I should
hardly have ventured to address you if you had been quite a
young girl. No doubt there are many years between us;--and so I
think there should be. A man of my age hardly looks to marry a
woman of the same standing as himself. But the question is one
for the lady to decide and you must decide it now.

As to my religion, I acknowledge the force of what your father
says,--though I think that a gentleman brought up with fewer
prejudices would have expressed himself in language less likely
to give offence. However I am a man not easily offended; and on
this occasion I am ready to take what he has said in good part.
I can easily conceive that there should be those who think that
the husband and wife should agree in religion. I am indifferent
to it myself. I shall not interfere with you if you make me
happy by becoming my wife, nor, I suppose, will you with me.
Should you have a daughter or daughters I am quite willing that
they should be brought up subject to your influence.

There was a plain-speaking in this which made Georgiana look round the
room as though to see whether any one was watching her as she read it.

But no doubt your father objects to me specially because I am a
Jew. If I were an atheist he might, perhaps, say nothing on the
subject of religion. On this matter as well as on others it
seems to me that your father has hardly kept pace with the
movements of the age. Fifty years ago, whatever claim a Jew
might have to be as well considered as a Christian, he certainly
was not so considered. Society was closed against him, except
under special circumstances, and so were all the privileges of
high position. But that has been altered. Your father does not
admit the change; but I think he is blind to it, because he does
not wish to see.

I say all this more as defending myself than as combating his
views with you. It must be for you and for you alone to decide
how far his views shall govern you. He has told me, after a
rather peremptory fashion, that I have behaved badly to him and
to his family because I did not go to him in the first instance
when I thou