"Lady Lovel!"
"Let her die. It will be better. Oh, God! that I should be brought to this. And what will you do, my lord? Do you mean to say that you will abandon her?"
"I cannot ask her to be my wife again."
"What;—because she has said this in her sickness,—when she is half delirious,—while she is dreaming of the words that man spoke to her? Have you no more strength than that? Are you so poor a creature?"
"I think I have been a poor creature to ask her a second time at all."
"No; not so. Your duty and mine are the same,—as should be hers. We must forget ourselves while we save the family. Do not I bear all? Have not I borne everything—contumely, solitude, ill words, poverty, and now this girl's unkindness? But even yet I will not give it up. Take the property,—as it is offered."
"I could not touch it."
"If not for you, then for your children. Take it all, so that we may be the stronger. But do not abandon us now, if you are a man."
He would not stay to hear her further exhortations, but hurried away from the house full of doubt and unhappiness.