think myself too old to write love
letters. I have no doubt you believe me when I say that I
entertain a most sincere affection for you; and I beseech you to
believe me in saying further that should you become my wife it
shall be the study of my life to make you happy.

It is essentially necessary that I should allude to one other
matter, as to which I have already told your father what I will
now tell you. I think it probable that within this week I shall
find myself a loser of a very large sum of money through the
failure of a gentleman whose bad treatment of me I will the more
readily forgive because he was the means of making me known to
you. This you must understand is private between you and me,
though I have thought it proper to inform your father. Such
loss, if it fall upon me, will not interfere in the least with
the income which I have proposed to settle upon you for your use
after my death; and, as your father declares that in the event
of your marrying me he will neither give to you nor bequeath to
you a shilling, he might have abstained from telling me to my
face that I was a bankrupt merchant when I myself told him of my
loss. I am not a bankrupt merchant nor at all likely to become
so. Nor will this loss at all interfere with my present mode of
living. But I have thought it right to inform you of it,
because, if it occur,--as I think it will,--I shall not deem it
right to keep a second establishment probably for the next two
or three years. But my house at Fulham and my stables there will
be kept up just as they are at present.

I have now told you everything which I think it is necessary you
should know, in order that you may determine either to adhere to
or to recede from your engagement. When you have resolved you
will let me know but a day or two may probably be necessary for
your decision. I hope I need not say that a decision in my
favour will make me a happy man.

I am, in the meantime, your affectionate friend,

EZEKIEL BREHGERT.

This very long letter puzzled Georgey a good deal, and left her, at
the time of reading it, very much in doubt as to what she would do.
She could understand that it was a plain-spoken and truth-telling
letter. Not that she, to herself, gave it praise for those virtues;
but that it imbued her unconsciously with a thorough belief. She was
apt to suspect deceit in oth