mits to my endurance. I
laid down Marian's letter, and felt myself--justly felt myself--an
injured man.

I am about to make a remark. It is, of course, applicable to the very
serious matter now under notice, or I should not allow it to appear in
this place.

Nothing, in my opinion, sets the odious selfishness of mankind in such
a repulsively vivid light as the treatment, in all classes of society,
which the Single people receive at the hands of the Married people.
When you have once shown yourself too considerate and self-denying to
add a family of your own to an already overcrowded population, you are
vindictively marked out by your married friends, who have no similar
consideration and no similar self-denial, as the recipient of half
their conjugal troubles, and the born friend of all their children.
Husbands and wives TALK of the cares of matrimony, and bachelors and
spinsters BEAR them. Take my own case. I considerately remain single,
and my poor dear brother Philip inconsiderately marries. What does he
do when he dies? He leaves his daughter to ME. She is a sweet
girl--she is also a dreadful responsibility. Why lay her on my
shoulders? Because I am bound, in the harmless character of a single
man, to relieve my married connections of all their own troubles. I do
my best with my brother's responsibility--I marry my niece, with
infinite fuss and difficulty, to the man her father wanted her to
marry. She and her husband disagree, and unpleasant consequences
follow. What does she do with those consequences? She transfers them
to ME. Why transfer them to ME? Because I am bound, in the harmless
character of a single man, to relieve my married connections of all
their own troubles. Poor single people! Poor human nature!

It is quite unnecessary to say that Marian's letter threatened me.
Everybody threatens me. All sorts of horrors were to fall on my
devoted head if I hesitated to turn Limmeridge House into an asylum for
my niece and her misfortunes. I did hesitate, nevertheless.

I have mentioned that my usual course, hitherto, had been to submit to
dear Marian, and save noise. But on this occasion, the consequences
involved in her extremely inconsiderate proposal were of a nature to
make me pause. If I opened Limmeridge House as an asylum to Lady
Glyde, what security had I against Sir Percival Glyde's following her
here in a state of violent resentment against ME for harbouring his
wife? I saw such a