'Even when Annaple works within an inch of her life?'
'Now that she is on a right tack about the baby, that will be easier. Yes, May, I do feel sometimes that I have brought her down to drudgery and narrowness and want of variety such as was never meant for her, but she will never let me think so. She says that it is living in realities, and that it makes her happier than toiling after society, or rather after the world, and I do believe it is true! I'm sure it is with me.'
'But such work as yours, Mark.'
'Nonsense, May; I enjoy it. I did not when I was in the Greenleaf firm, with an undeveloped sense that Goodenough was not to be trusted, and we were drifting to the bad, yet too green to understand or hinder it; but this I thoroughly like. What does one want but honest effective work, with some power of dealing with and helping those good fellows, the hands, to see the right and help themselves?'
May sighed. 'And yet, now that poor child is gone, I feel all the more how hard it is that you should be put out of the rights of your name.'
'I never had any rights. It was the bane of my life to be supposed to have them. Nothing but this could have made a man of me.'
'And don't you have regrets for your boy?'
'I don't think I have—provided we can give him an education—such as I failed to make proper use of, or Annaple might be luxuriating at Pera at this moment.'
'Well!' said May, pausing as she looked up the vista of trees at the great house; 'I can't bear it to go out of the old name.'
'Names may be taken!'