"Then we are deceiving all the world in calling ourselves man and wife."
"Certainly we are; but to that we had made up our mind! We are not injuring all the world. No doubt it is a lie,—but there are circumstances in which a lie can hardly be a sin. I would have been the last to say so before all this had come upon me, but I feel it to be so now. It is a lie to say that you are my wife."
"Is it? Is it?"
"Is it not? And yet I would rather cut my tongue out than say otherwise. To give you my name is a lie,—but what should I think of myself were I to allow you to use any other? What would you have thought if I had asked you to go away and leave me when that bad hour came upon us?"
"I would have borne it."
"I could not have borne it. There are worse things than a lie. I have found, since this came upon us, that it may be well to choose one sin in order that another may be shunned. To cherish you, to comfort you, to make the storm less sharp to you,—that has already been my duty as well as my pleasure. To do the same to me is your duty."
"And my pleasure; and my pleasure,—my only pleasure."
"We must cling to each other, let the world call us what names it may. But there may come a time in which one is called on to do a special act of justice to others. It has come now to me. From the world at large I am prepared, if possible, to keep my secret, even though I do it by lying;—but to this one man I am driven to tell it, because I may not return his friendship by doing him an evil."
Morning school at this time of the year at Bowick began at half-past seven. There was an hour of school before breakfast, at which the Doctor did not himself put in an appearance. He was wont to tell the boys that he had done all that when he was young, and that now in his old age it suited him best to have his breakfast before he began the work of the day. Mr. Peacocke, of course, attended the morning school. Indeed, as the matutinal performances were altogether classical, it was impossible that much should be done without him. On this Saturday morning, however, he was not present; and a few minutes after the proper time, the mathematical master took his place. "I saw him coming across out of his own door," little Jack Talbot said to the younger of the two Clifford boys, "and there was a man coming up from the gate who met him."
"What sort of a man?" asked Clifford.