’If my mode of addressing your Grace be too familiar I hope you will excuse it.  It seems to me that if I were to use one more distant, I should myself be detracting something from my right to make the claim which I intend to put forward.  You know what my feelings are in reference to your daughter.  I do not pretend to suppose that they should have the least weight with you.  But you know also what her feelings are for me.  A man seems to be vain when he expresses his conviction of a woman’s love for himself.  But this matter is so important to her as well as to me that I am compelled to lay aside all pretence.  If she do not love me as I love her, then the whole thing drops to the ground.  Then it will be for me to take myself off from out of your notice,—­and from hers, and to keep to myself whatever heart-breaking I may have to undergo.  But if she be as steadfast in this matter as I am,—­if her happiness be fixed on marrying me as mine to marrying her,—­then, I think, I am entitled to ask you whether you are justified in keeping us apart.

’I know well what are the discrepancies.  Speaking from my own feeling I regard very little those of rank.  I believe myself to be as good a gentleman as though my father’s forefathers had sat for centuries past in the House of Lords.  I believe that you would have thought so also had you and I been brought in contact on any other subject.  The discrepancy with regard to money is, I own, a great trouble to me.  Having no wealth of my own I wish that your daughter were so circumstanced that I could go out into the world and earn bread for her.  I know myself so well that I dare say positively that her money,—­if it be that she will have money,—­had no attractions for me when I first became acquainted with her and adds nothing now to the persistency with which I claim her hand.

’But I venture to ask whether you can dare to keep us apart if her happiness depends on her lover for me?  It is now more than six months since I called upon you in London and explained my wishes.  You will understand me when I say that I cannot be contented to sit idle, trusting simply to the assurance I have of her affection.  Did I doubt it, my way would be more clear.  I should feel in that case that she would yield to your wishes, and I should then, as I have said before, just take myself out of the way.  But if it be not so, then I am bound to do something,—­on her behalf as well as my own.  What am I to do?  Any endeavours to meet her clandestinely is against my instincts, and would certainly be rejected by her.  A secret correspondence would be equally distasteful to both of us.  Whatever I do in this matter, I wish you to know that I do it.

’Yours always,
‘Most faithfully, and with the deepest respect,’
‘Francis Tregear.’