"But whither?"
"Ah! on that we must decide. He would be friendly with me. Though he might think it necessary that I should leave Bowick, he would not turn against me violently."
"He could do nothing."
"I think he would assist me rather. He would help me, perhaps, to find some place where I might still earn my bread by such skill as I possess;—where I could do so without dragging in aught of my domestic life, as I have been forced to do here."
"I have been a curse to you," exclaimed the unhappy wife.
"My dearest blessing," he said. "That which you call a curse has come from circumstances which are common to both of us. There need be no more said about it. That man has been a source of terrible trouble to us. The trouble must be discussed from time to time, but the necessity of enduring it may be taken for granted."
"I cannot be a philosopher such as you are," she said.
"There is no escape from it. The philosophy is forced upon us. When an evil thing is necessary, there remains only the consideration how it may be best borne."
"You must tell him, then?"
"I think so. I have a week to consider of it; but I think so. Though he is very kind at this moment in giving me the option, and means what he says in declaring that I shall remain even though I tell him nothing, yet his mind would become uneasy, and he would gradually become discontented. Think how great is his stake in the school! How would he feel towards me, were its success to be gradually diminished because he kept a master here of whom people believed some unknown evil?"