I have calculated that the part of your means you intend for me will meet all our expenses of every sort if you permit me to have the arranging, of our daily affairs.  I will pay the rent and meet all the expenses of our living out of this sum, leaving you your reserved funds to meet your ordinary requirements and pleasures.  By this arrangement, you see, I shall get my living free, and I am sure shall have a surplus over and above our expenses, as I am a good manager and used to making the most of everything.

There is one sacrifice which, do we enter into this arrangement, I must ask of you—­that when we return to New York you give up your valet.  For more than one reason:  I cannot have a spy upon the mode of life we are to lead.  I am foolishly sensitive of the position of a neglected wife, and I feel assured your gentlemanly instincts will prevent your ever offering any observable slight to the woman who bears your name.  Besides, in the apartments I propose our taking there will be no room for a man-servant, and one of the maids connected with the house will be all the assistant I shall require.  When you are away on your frequent excursions to all parts of the world it will be very easy to provide yourself a servant.  Will you try for a few weeks how well I can supply, or have the place supplied, of this man, whom you intend in any case to dismiss?  This is all.  Next week, the doctor thinks, you may be moved to a lounge, and perhaps the week after be able to travel, or at farthest the week following.

I acknowledge to the womanish feeling of being exultant at the idea of the envy I shall awaken in the breasts of your adoring circle of lady friends—­my lady cousins among them—­in having, spite of my unattractiveness, secured the husband they have long striven by every wile to win.  Ah! they little know, and I trust never may, why I, without seeking, have ensnared their rara avis to be my legal bondsman.  Rather a contradiction in terms!

The pretty fiction of our sudden marriage being a renewal of an old love-affair is more of an untruth than I am used to letting pass, and yet has enough truth in it to make it reality, since you were the hero of my girlish dreams.  So we will let the explanation thus worded, which you have written to my uncles and stated verbally to Mrs. Keller, stand; also, that the undue haste was caused by your pressing need of me during your accident.  I think, indeed, from my cousin Harry’s letter yesterday, and one from Shelton last week, they have taken the idea that we have been spending the summer together, and that you were following me home when you were stayed in your mad career by a broken leg.

I am done; are you not thankful?  There have been some things in this letter very hard to say, which, if I were braver or knew you better, I should have liked to be more outspoken about.  But enough has, I think, been said to make you appreciate my earnest desires and my reasons for them.  I am most truly,