"Is Caroline mine?"
"Caroline is yours."
"I will prize her. The sense of her value is here, in my heart; the necessity for her society is blended with my life. Not more jealous shall I be of the blood whose flow moves my pulses than of her happiness and well-being."
"I love you, too, Robert, and will take faithful care of you."
"Will you take faithful care of me? Faithful care! As if that rose should promise to shelter from tempest this hard gray stone! But she will care for me, in her way. These hands will be the gentle ministrants of every comfort I can taste. I know the being I seek to entwine with my own will bring me a solace, a charity, a purity, to which, of myself, I am a stranger."
Suddenly Caroline was troubled; her lip quivered.
"What flutters my dove?" asked Moore, as she nestled to and then uneasily shrank from him.
"Poor mamma! I am all mamma has. Must I leave her?"
"Do you know, I thought of that difficulty. I and 'mamma' have discussed it."
"Tell me what you wish, what you would like, and I will consider if it is possible to consent. But I cannot desert her, even for you. I cannot break her heart, even for your sake."