I am myself so clear as to my own rectitude of purpose and conduct, and am so well aware of your perspicuity, that I venture to believe that if you will read this letter I shall convince you.
Before I go any further I will confess that the matter is one,--I was going to say almost of life and death to me.
Circumstances, not of my own seeking, have for some years past thrown me so closely into intercourse with your family that now to be cast off, and to be put on one side as a disgraced person,--and that so quickly after the death of her who loved me so dearly and who was so dear to me,--is such an affront as I cannot bear and hold up my head afterwards.

I have come to be known as her whom your uncle trusted and loved, as her whom your wife trusted and loved,--obscure as I was before;--and as her whom, may I not say, you yourself trusted?
As there was much of honour and very much of pleasure in this, so also was there something of misfortune.

Friendships are safest when the friends are of the same standing.

I have always felt there was danger, and now the thing I feared has come home to me.
Now I will plead my case.

I fancy, that when first you heard that I had been cognisant of your daughter's engagement, you imagined that I was aware of it before I went to Matching.