Your poor mother means very kindly, but she can't advise me.
I have long dreaded the explanations which can not now be avoided.

The family situation has been going from bad to worse,--and I have said nothing--hoping always to find some way out.

But now it is precisely my fear that--if we can't discover it--you will find yourself, without preparation, ruined on the threshold of life, which drives me to tell you everything.

Your head is a cleverer one than mine.

You may think of something.