This one"-- and he touched the portrait of the bejewelled woman--"is, as you have divined already, a widow, a very amiable widow.

Perhaps she is a little older than you are, but that is nothing.

Your experience must have taught you that the man who wishes to be loved, tenderly loved, pampered, caressed, spoiled, should marry a woman older than himself, who will treat him as a husband and as a son.

Her first husband was a careful merchant, who, had he lived, would have made a large fortune in the butcher business"-- he mumbled this word instead of pronouncing it clearly--"but although he died just at the time when his affairs were beginning to develop, he left twenty thousand pounds' income to his wife.

As I have told you what is good, I must tell you what is to be regretted.