connubial bliss, which is never to
know any interruption.

Now that I have come to connubial bliss, and feel so
satisfied as to Nina's prospects, I have a word or two
to say about the bliss of somebody else. Nina is my own
child, and of course comes first. But one Jonathan Stubbs
is my nephew, and is also very near to my heart. From all
that I hear, I fancy that he has set his mind also on
connubial bliss. Have you not heard that it is so?

A bird has whispered to me that you have not been kind
to him. Why should it be so? Nobody knows better than I
do that a young lady is entitled to the custody of her
own heart, and that she should not be compelled, or even
persuaded, to give her hand in opposition to her own
feelings. If your feelings and your heart are altogether
opposed to the poor fellow, of course there must be an end
of it. But I had thought that from the time you first met
him he had been a favourite of yours;--so much so that
there was a moment in which I feared that you might think
too much of the attentions of a man who has ever been a
favourite with all who have known him. But I have found
that in this I was altogether mistaken. When he came that
evening to see the last of you at the theatre, taking, as
I knew he did, considerable trouble to release himself
from other engagements, I was pretty sure how it was going
to be. He is not a man to be in love with a girl for a
month and then to be in love with another the next month.
When once he allowed himself to think that he was in
love, the thing was done and fixed either for his great
delight,--or else to his great trouble.

I knew how it was to be, and so it has been. Am I not
right in saying that on two occasions, at considerable
intervals, he has come to you and made distinct offers of
his hand? I fear, though I do not actually know it, that
you have just as distinctly rejected those offers. I do
not know it, because none but you and he can know the
exact words with which you received from him the tender
of all that he had to give you. I can easily believe that
he, with all his intelligence, might be deceived by the
feminine reserve and coyness of such a girl as you. If it
be so, I do pray that no folly may be allowed to interfere
with his happiness and with yours.

I call it folly, not because I am adverse to feminine