"The heart will follow the thoughts, and they may be controlled. I am not passionate, perhaps, as you are, and I think I can control my heart. But my fortune has been kind to me, and I have never been tempted. Laura, do not think I am preaching to you."
"Oh no;—but your husband; think of him, and think of mine! You have babies."
"May God make me thankful. I have every good thing on earth that God can give."
"And what have I? To see that man prosper in life, who they tell me is a murderer; that man who is now in a felon's gaol,—whom they will hang for ought we know,—to see him go forward and justify my thoughts of him! that yesterday was all I had. To-day I have nothing,—except the shame with which you and Oswald say that I have covered myself."
"Laura, I have never said so."
"I saw it in your eye when he accused me. And I know that it is shameful. I do know that I am covered with shame. But I can bear my own disgrace better than his danger." After a long pause,—a silence of probably some fifteen minutes,—she spoke again. "If Robert should die,—what would happen then?"
"It would be—a release, I suppose," said Lady Chiltern in a voice so low, that it was almost a whisper.
"A release indeed;—and I would become that man's wife the next day, at the foot of the gallows;—if he would have me. But he would not have me."