"Come, Margaret; I want to do what is best for us both. How shall it be?"
"John, you have children, and you should do what is best for them."
Then there was a pause again, and when he spoke after a while, he was looking down at the floor and poking among the pattern on the carpet with his stick.
"Margaret, when I first asked you to marry me, you refused me."
"I did," said she; "and then all the property was mine."
"But afterwards you said you would have me."
"Yes; and when you asked me the second time I had nothing. I know all that."
"I thought nothing about the money then. I mean that I never thought you refused me because you were rich and took me because you were poor. I was not at all unhappy about that when we were walking round the shrubbery. But when I thought you had cared for that man—"
"I had never cared for him," said Margaret, withdrawing her hand from behind the pillow in her energy, and fearing no longer that she might tremble. "I had never cared for him. He is a false man, and told untruths to my aunt."
"Yes, he is, a liar,—a damnable liar. That is true at any rate."