"As I said before, he was dazzled—"
"Dazzled!—oh!"
"But even then he had no idea of being untrue to you."
"No; he was untrue without an idea. That is worse."
"Florence, you are perverse, and are determined to be unfair. I must beg that you will hear me to the end, so that then you may be able to judge what course you ought to follow." This Mrs. Burton said with the air of a great authority; after which she continued in a voice something less stern—"He thought of doing no injury to you when he went to see her; but something of the feeling of his old love grew upon him when he was in her company, and he became embarrassed by his position before he was aware of his own danger. He might, of course, have been stronger." Here Florence exhibited a gesture of strong impatience, though she did not speak. "I am not going to defend him altogether, but I think you must admit that he was hardly tried. Of course I cannot say what passed between them, but I can understand how easily they might recur to the old scenes;—how naturally she would wish for a renewal of the love which she had been base enough to betray! She does not, however, consider herself as at present engaged to him. That you may know for certain. It may be that she has asked him for such a promise, and that he has hesitated. If so, his staying away from us, and his not writing to you, can be easily understood."
"And what is it you would have me do?"
"He is ill now. Wait till he is well. He would have been here before this, had not illness prevented him. Wait till he comes."
"I cannot do that, Cissy. Wait I must, but I cannot wait without offering him, through his mother, the freedom which I have so much reason to know that he desires."
"We do not know that he desires it. We do not know that his mother even suspects him of any fault towards you. Now that he is there,—at home,—away from Bolton Street—"
"I do not care to trust to such influences as that, Cissy. If he could not spend this morning with her in her own house, and then as he left her feel that he preferred me to her, and to all the world, I would rather be as I am than take his hand. He shall not marry me from pity, nor yet from a sense of duty. We know the old story,—how the devil would be a monk when he was sick. I will not accept his sick-bed allegiance, or have to think that I owe my husband to a mother's influence over him while he is ill."