“I have,” he answered. “With such help from Mr. Jarndyce as you who know him so well can imagine him to have rendered me, I have succeeded.”
“Heaven bless him for it,” said I, giving him my hand; “and heaven bless you in all you do!”
“I shall do it better for the wish,” he answered; “it will make me enter on these new duties as on another sacred trust from you.”
“Ah! Richard!” I exclaimed involuntarily, “What will he do when you are gone!”
“I am not required to go yet; I would not desert him, dear Miss Summerson, even if I were.”
One other thing I felt it needful to touch upon before he left me. I knew that I should not be worthier of the love I could not take if I reserved it.
“Mr. Woodcourt,” said I, “you will be glad to know from my lips before I say good night that in the future, which is clear and bright before me, I am most happy, most fortunate, have nothing to regret or desire.”
It was indeed a glad hearing to him, he replied.
“From my childhood I have been,” said I, “the object of the untiring goodness of the best of human beings, to whom I am so bound by every tie of attachment, gratitude, and love, that nothing I could do in the compass of a life could express the feelings of a single day.”
“I share those feelings,” he returned. “You speak of Mr. Jarndyce.”