genuine honesty of the letter was altogether thrown away upon her.  She never said to herself, as she read it, that she might safely trust herself to this man, though he were a Jew, though greasy and like a butcher, though over fifty and with a family, because he was an honest man.  She did not see that the letter was particularly sensible;—­but she did allow herself to be pained by the total absence of romance.  She was annoyed at the first allusion to her age, and angry at the second; and yet she had never supposed that Brehgert had taken her to be younger than she was.  She was well aware that the world in general attributes more years to unmarried women than they have lived, as a sort of equalising counter-weight against the pretences which young women make on...