“Well?” she gasped.
“He tells me that my charity has done more harm than good, and in fact, that I have had an evil influence upon every one whom I have come near. He said it in the most delicate way, but that was really what it amounted to.”
“Oh, is that all?” said Laura, with a long sigh of relief. “You must not think of minding what Mr. Spurling says. Why, it is absurd on the face of it! Everybody knows that there are dozens of men all over the country who would have been ruined and turned out of their houses if you had not stood their friend. How could they be the worse for having known you? I wonder that Mr. Spurling can talk such nonsense!”
“How is Robert's picture getting on?”
“Oh, he has a lazy fit on him. He has not touched it for ever so long. But why do you ask that? You have that furrow on your brow again. Put it away, sir!”
She smoothed it away with her little white hand.
“Well, at any rate, I don't think that quite everybody is the worse,” said he, looking down at her. “There is one, at least, who is beyond taint, one who is good, and pure, and true, and who would love me as well if I were a poor clerk struggling for a livelihood. You would, would you not, Laura?”
“You foolish boy! of course I would.”
“And yet how strange it is that it should be so. That you, who are the only woman whom I have ever loved, should be the only one in whom I also have raised an affection which is free from greed or interest. I wonder whether you may not have been sent by Providence simply to restore my confidence in the world. How barren a place would it not be if it were not for woman's love! When all seemed black around me this morning, I tell you, Laura, that I seemed to turn to you and to your love as the one thing on earth upon which I could rely. All else seemed shifting, unstable, influenced by this or that base consideration. In you, and you only, could I trust.”
“And I in you, dear Raffles! I never knew what love was until I met you.”