Will you have these and
the chariot, or walk on foot and mend your husband's stockings?
"I can not tell you now--afterward 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 dispatched a letter to Sir Francis
Clavering, saying that I can not accept his seat in Parliament until
after my marriage; in like manner I can not 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.
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