"The remedy is worse than the disease."
"Then submit to the disease, and sink under it. Sir William, your humble servant," cried I, rising as if to go.
"Biddulph, my dear Biddulph," cried he, catching my hand, and grasping it with dying energy, "what are you about to do? You surely will not leave me in this damned exigency? Think of my situation! I have parted with every means of raising more money, and eternal infamy will be the consequence of this last cursed subterfuge of mine transpiring. Oh, my God! how sunk am I! And will you not hold out your friendly arm?"
"I have already offered you proposals," I replied with an affected coldness, "which you do not think proper to accede to."
"Would you consign me to everlasting perdition?"
"Will you make no sacrifice to extricate yourself?"
"Yes; my life."
"What, at Tyburn?"
"Dam—n on the thought! oh! Biddulph, Biddulph, are there no other means? Reflect—the honour of my injured wife!" "Will not that suffer by your undergoing an ignominious death?"
"Ah! why do you thus stretch my heart-strings? Julia is virtuous, and deserves a better fate than she has met with in me. What a wretch must that man be, who will consign his wife to infamy! No; sunk, lost, and ruined as I am, I cannot yield to such baseness; I should be doubly damned."