. I cannot but get stupid ideas into my mind, which
one word from you would dissipate.

"Now, however, I must write again, order or no order. Between a man and
a woman circumstanced as you and I, things will arise which make it
incumbent on one or the other to write. It is absolutely necessary that
you should now know what are my intentions, and understand the reasons
which have actuated me. I have found myself left in a most unfortunate
condition by my uncle's folly. He is going on with a stupid marriage for
the purpose of disinheriting me, and has in the mean time stopped the
allowance which he had made me since I left college. Of course I have no
absolute claim on him. But I cannot understand how he can reconcile
himself to do so, when he himself prevented my going to the Bar, saying
that it would be unnecessary.

"But so it is, I am driven to look about for myself. It is very hard at
my time of life to find an opening in any profession. I think I told you
before that I had ideas of going to Cambridge and endeavoring to get
pupils, trusting to my fellowship rather than to my acquirements. But
this I have always looked upon with great dislike, and would only have
taken to it if nothing else was to be had. Now there has come forward
an old college acquaintance, a man who is three or four years my senior,
who has offered to take me to America as his private secretary. He
proposes to remain there for three years. I of course shall not bind
myself to stay as long; but I may not improbably do so. He is to pay my
expenses and to give me a salary of three hundred a year. This will,
perhaps, lead to nothing else, but will for the present be better than
nothing. I am to start in just a month from the present time.

"Now you know it all except that the man's name is Sir William Crook. He
is a decent sort of a fellow, and has got a wife who is to go with him.
He is the hardest working man I know, but, between you and me, will
never set the Thames on fire. If the Thames is to be illumined at all, I
rather think that I shall be expected to do it.

"Now, my own one, what am I to say about you, and of myself, as your
husband that is to be? Will you wait, at any rate, for three years with
the conviction that the three years will too probably end in your having
to wait again?

"I do feel that in my altered position I ought to give you back your
troth, and tell you that things shall be as they used to be before that
happy night at