es whether
you can bear the life which I offer you--at least, it is fair that you
should know what it will be. If you say, 'Yes, Arthur, I will follow
your fate whatever it may be, and be a loyal and loving wife to aid and
cheer you'--come to me, dear Blanche, and may God help me so that I may
do my duty to you. If not, and you look to a higher station, I must not
bar Blanche's fortune--I will stand in the crowd, and see your ladyship
go to Court when you are presented, and you shall give me a smile from
your chariot window. I saw Lady Mirabel going to the drawing-room last
season: the happy husband at her side glittered with stars and cordons.
All the flowers in the garden bloomed in the coachman's bosom. Will
you have these and the chariot, or walk on foot and mend your husband's
stockings?

"I cannot tell you now--afterwards I might, should the day come when we
may have no secrets from one another--what has happened within the last
few hours which has changed all my prospects in life: but so it is, that
I have learned something which forces me to give up the plans which
I had formed, and many vain and ambitious hopes in which I had been
indulging. I have written and despatched a letter to Sir Francis
Clavering, saying that I cannot accept his seat in Parliament until
after my marriage; in like manner I cannot and will not accept any
larger fortune with you than that which has always belonged to you since
your grandfather's death, and the birth of your half-brother. Your
good mother is not in the least aware--I hope she never may be--of the
reasons which force me to this very strange decision. They arise from a
painful circumstance, which is attributable to none of our faults; but,
having once befallen, they are as fatal and irreparable as that shock
which overset honest Alnaschar's porcelain, and shattered all his hopes
beyond the power of mending. I write gaily enough, for there is no use
in bewailing such a hopeless mischance. We have not drawn the great
prize in the lottery, dear Blanche: but I shall be contented enough
without it, if you can be so; and I repeat, with all my heart, that I
will do my best to make you happy.

"And now, what news shall I give you? My uncle is very unwell, and takes
my refusal of the seat in Parliament in sad dudgeon: the scheme was
his, poor old gentleman, and he naturally bemoans its failure. But
Warrington, Laura, and I had a council of war: they know this awful
secret, and back