applications privately, I guarantee to put you back three years more.
I will forfeit all the money I shall have to advance for you in this
matter, if, when I have ground you young again in my wonderful mill,
you look more than seven-and-twenty in any man's eyes living--except,
of course, when you wake anxious in the small hours of the morning; and
then, my dear, you will be old and ugly in the retirement of your own
room, and it won't matter.

"'But,' you may say, 'supposing all this, here I am, even with your
art to help me, looking a good six years older than he is; and that
is against me at starting.' Is it? Just think again. Surely, your
own experience must have shown you that the commonest of all common
weaknesses, in young fellows of this Armadale's age, is to fall in love
with women older than themselves. Who are the men who really appreciate
us in the bloom of our youth (I'm sure I have cause to speak well of the
bloom of youth; I made fifty guineas to-day by putting it on the spotted
shoulders of a woman old enough to be your mother)--who are the men, I
say, who are ready to worship us when we are mere babies of seventeen?
The gay young gentlemen in the bloom of their own youth? No! The cunning
old wretches who are on the wrong side of forty.

"And what is the moral of this, as the story-books say?

"The moral is that the chances, with such a head as you have got on
your shoulders, are all in your favor. If you feel your present forlorn
position, as I believe you do; if you know what a charming woman (in the
men's eyes) you can still be when you please; and if all your resolution
has really come back, after that shocking outbreak of desperation on
board the steamer (natural enough, I own, under the dreadful provocation
laid on you), you will want no further persuasion from me to try this
experiment. Only to think of how things turn out! If the other young
booby had not jumped into the river after you, _this_ young booby would
never have had the estate. It really looks as if fate had determined
that you were to be Mrs. Armadale, of Thorpe Ambrose; and who can
control his fate, as the poet says?

"Send me one line to say Yes or No; and believe me your attached old
friend,

"MARIA OLDERSHAW."

3. _From Miss Gwilt to Mrs. Oldershaw_.

Richmond, Thursday.

'YOU OLD WRETCH--I won't say Yes or No till I have had a long, long
look at my glass first. If you had any real regard for anybody but your
wicked ol