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I would prefer to leave you in ignorance, or let you divine them, but I explain to prevent your friendship imagining afflictions that are not mine. In the first place, to reassure you, my fortune has not suffered during my absence. On my return to Paris, my agent dazzled me with the picture of my wealth.
We are cousins, though distant ones, and as for fortune, I have never been ambitious, and shall be well content to share what you may have, till You know some day, Ronald, Lunnasting in all probability will be mine. I am not greedy of it. I would gladly see it belong to my long-lost cousin, poor aunt Hilda's son, if he could be found; but after the lapse of so many years, that is not likely.
With the note, however, I sent her a raised pie and a red and green shawl, of which I begged her acceptance in token of amity; and as neither of those gifts was returned, I concluded that she ate the one and wore the other, and that there was peace between us. But the scales of fortune as they go up for one, go down for another.
It was my good fortune to have a father and mother who were very careful and hard-working and thoughtful people; I and my sister and brother were brought up in an orderly home, and taught from the first that ceaseless labour and strict economy were the things always to be kept in mind.
Though fortune has not given me wealth enough to raise me above my mean profession, yet I have not omitted to cultivate my mind as much as I could, by reading books of science and history; and allow me, I beseech you, to say, that I have also read in another author a maxim which I have always happily followed: 'We conceal our secret from such persons only as are known to all the world to want discretion, and would abuse our confidence; but we hesitate not to discover it to the prudent, because we know that with them it is safe. A secret in my keeping is as secure as if it were locked up in a cabinet, the key of which is lost, and the door sealed up."
Our project, my dear friend, is brought to a point so long desired. Burr guarantees the result with his life and honour, with the lives and honour and fortune of hundreds, the best blood of our country.
"You know, you must have been doing something all these years since you won your fortune in Alaska." "Surely! But what became of my wealth? That is a hard question." "Perhaps we can help you find out what you have been doing. Then you will gradually remember it all. Have you those bank-notes they say you carried in your pocket when you were brought in?" "Why, they are in the hospital safe.
It is not merely a rough and contemptuous intercourse, it is the refusal of intercourse the last outrage. How do we propose to redress those conditions of life that annoy us when a brother whines, if we deny the presence, the voice, and the being of this brother, and if, because fortune has refused him money, we refuse him existence?
"You may believe that I was especially curious to look at that old lover of hers, through my glasses. He was no longer young, you know, when I came, and his fame and fortune were secure. Certainly I have heard of few men more beloved, and of none more worthy to be loved. He had the easy manner of a man of the world, the sensitive grace of a poet, and the charitable judgment of a wide traveller.
He told his friends, with smiling resignation, that they ought to admire his philosophy, that he had lost at once his fortune, his place, his fellowship, and his mistress, that he must think of turning tutor again, and yet that his spirits were as good as ever. He had one consolation. Of the unpopularity which his friends had incurred, he had no share.
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