"Not feel compassion for him, papa? Who could help it? Poor Charley, what a bitter degradation for him!"
"For him! degradation for him! Bless my soul, I can't understand; for us, Georgina,--degradation for us, you mean! However, there's an end of it. We've washed our hands of him from this time forth, and never--"
"Papa, do you know what you're saying? Washed our hands of Charles Mitford! Do you recollect that I have promised to be his wife?"
"Promised to be his wife! Why, the girl's going mad! Promised to be his wife! Do you know that the man has committed forgery?"
"Well, papa."
"Well, papa! Good God! I shall go mad myself! You know he's committed forgery, and you still hold to your engagement to him?"
"Unquestionably. Is it for me, his betrothed wife, to desert him now that he is in misery and disgrace? Is it for you, a Christian clergyman, to turn your back on an old friend who has fallen, and who needs your sympathy and counsel now really for the first time in his life? Would you wish me to give up this engagement, which, perhaps, may be the very means of bringing Charles back to the right?"
"Yes, my dear, yes; that's all very well," said the old gentleman,--"all very--well from a woman's point of view. But you see, for ourselves--"
"Well, papa, what then?"
"Well, my dear, of course we ought not to think so much for ourselves; but still, as your father, I've a right to say that I should not wish to see you married to a--a felon."