“My dear Jane, it would make you still more unhappy if from mere desire to promote my personal ease and comfort, I could forget the solemn responsibility imposed by my profession. Moreover, my physical strength is quite equal to the tax I exact from it.”
“I doubt it, for we have all remarked how pale and worn you look.”
“My jaded appearance is attributable to mental anxiety, rather than bodily exhaustion.”
“If Mrs. Gerome is so ill as to require such unremitting care and vigilance, she should have a nurse, instead of expecting a physician to devote all his time and attention to her. Where is Hester Denison?”
“I have placed her at the steam-mill above town, where there is a bad case of small-pox, and even if she were not thus engaged, I should not take her to ‘Solitude.’”
“Pray, why not? She took first-rate care of me when I was so sick last year.”
“Mrs. Gerome is morbidly sensitive at all times, and at this juncture I should be afraid to introduce a stranger into her sick room.”
“When people are so excessively nervous about being seen, I can’t help feeling a little suspicious. Do you suppose that Mrs. Gerome loved her husband so much better than the majority of widows love theirs, that seven years after his death she can’t bear to be looked at? I like to see a woman show due respect to her husband’s memory, but I tell you my experience—or rather my observation—leads me to believe that these young widows who make the greatest parade of their grief, and load themselves with crape and bombazine till they can scarcely stagger under their flutings, flounces, and jet-fringes, are the most anxious to marry again.”
“Stop, my darling sister! Who has been filling your tongue and curdling all the ‘milk of human kindness’ in your generous heart? If women refuse to each other due sympathy in sorrow, to what quarter can they turn for that balm which their natures require? I never before heard you utter sentiments that trenched so closely upon harsh uncharitableness. Your lips generally employ only the silvery language of leniency, which I so much love to hear, but to-day they adopt the dialect of Libeldom. Recollect, my dear sister, that even the pagan Athenians would never build a temple to Clemency, 272 which they contended found her most appropriate altars in human hearts.”