It ran as follows:-- Dear Mrs.Gordon, I am writing to you about a most important matter.

Colonel Selwyn is dead, and my daughter has come out from England.

I don't know anyone to take charge of her except yourself.

I am an old man now, and set in my ways, and this girl is really all I have to live for.

Looking back on my life, I see where I have been a fool; and perhaps the good fortune that has followed me has been more luck than anything else.