them yourself. Are you, under these
circumstances, freely to communicate to him what I have here written to
you? Or are you to leave him under the impression that no such private
expression of my wishes as this is in existence; and are you to state
all the conditions relating to his marriage, as if they emanated
entirely from yourself?

"If you will adopt this latter alternative, you will add one more to the
many obligations under which your friendship has placed me.

"I have serious reason to believe that the possession of my money, and
the discovery of any peculiar arrangements relating to the disposal of
it, will be objects (after my decease) of the fraud and conspiracy of an
unscrupulous person. I am therefore anxious--for your sake, in the
first place--that no suspicion of the existence of this letter should
be conveyed to the mind of the person to whom I allude. And I am equally
desirous--for Mrs. Girdlestone's sake, in the second place--that this
same person should be entirely ignorant that the legacy will pass into
Mrs. Girdlestone's possession, if your nephew is not married in the
given time. I know George's easy, pliable disposition; I dread the
attempts that will be made to practice on it; and I feel sure that the
prudent course will be, to abstain from trusting him with secrets,
the rash revelation of which might be followed by serious, and even
dangerous results.

"State the conditions, therefore, to your nephew, as if they were your
own. Let him think they have been suggested to your mind by the new
responsibilities imposed on you as a man of property, by your
position in my will, and by your consequent anxiety to provide for the
perpetuation of the family name. If these reasons are not sufficient to
satisfy him, there can be no objection to your referring him, for any
further explanations which he may desire, to his wedding-day.

"I have done. My last wishes are now confided to you, in implicit
reliance on your honor, and on your tender regard for the memory of your
friend. Of the miserable circumstances which compel me to write as I
have written here, I say nothing. You will hear of them, if my life is
spared, from my own lips--for you will be the first friend whom I shall
consult in my difficulty and distress. Keep this letter strictly secret,
and strictly in your own possession, until my requests are complied
with. Let no human being but yourself know where it is, on any pretense
whatever.

"Bel