Read it through once

This was a more serious matter than it at first appears. The money in the Funds was left by Dr. Russell for his daughter and her offspring and could not therefore be touched without authority from Miss Mitford, who was her mother’s sole heir. How then did Dr. Mitford propose to obtain its use? There is only one answer and it is one which involves the integrity which Miss Mitford did not question. Harness’s reply was plain and to the point. “Depend upon it the money shall never be touched with _my_ consent. It was consideration for your future welfare which prevented my father’s consenting to its being sold out some years ago, when you had been persuaded, and wished to persuade him, to your own utter ruin.” [This was during the stressful time at Bertram House when, with the consent of her mother, Miss Mitford wrote to Dr. Harness imploring him to sell out and give her father the use of the money.] “That £3,000 I consider as the sheet-anchor of your independence, if age should ever render literature irksome to you, or infirmity incapacitate you for exertion; and, _while your father lives_, it shall never stir from its present post in the Funds. After he has ceased (as all fathers must cease) to live, my first object will be to consult with you and my most intelligent money-managing friends, and discover the mode of making the stock most profitable to your comfort, either by annuity or any other mode that may be thought most advisable. Till then—_from whatever quarter the proposition may come_—I have but one black, blank, unqualified _No_ for my answer. I do not doubt Dr. Mitford’s integrity, but I have not the slightest confidence in his prudence; and I am fully satisfied that if these three thousand and odd hundreds of pounds were placed at his disposal _to-day_, they would fly the way so many other thousands have gone before them, _to-morrow_. Excuse me saying this; but I cannot help it.”