Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. II.djvu/436

446 left to her own independent action. I have now become acquainted with her circumstances, and she herself has sufficient knowledge of business to know that her small paternal inheritance is insufficient for her wants. She must experience want and necessity, if she be not able to earn money by giving instruction in music, which, with her peculiar disposition and delicate health, must be another species of suffering. This thought is insupportable to me. When I leave her, I must know that she is safe from this bitter experience of life. I have myself obligations to fulfill, and have not, as yet, sufficient opulence to do all for her that I could have wished; but I have opened for her an account in the Bank of Genoa, and placed deposits in the funds at Marseilles, which, added to her own little property, will insure her a life free from anxiety. And this brings me to my request to you. She must never know that this provision has come from me. Her pride and her sense of honor would lead her to hesitate in accepting of it. Tell her, I beseech of you, that it is according to the will of a distant relative, or a deceased friend of her father. She is childish and careless enough in such matters to believe it without asking further questions. Promise me so to manage as that she shall believe this; and here are the necessary papers, which you must place in the hands of her uncle; he is a good man, and the knowledge of the whole business must go to her through him. I had intended these documents to have been a marriage-present for my wife. I had a pleasure in the thought of making her, in this way, independent of me, even as my wife; they shall now secure her