"I don't know that I deserve any gratitude for that, John; my care for you is so very much greater than any other feeling which can possibly enter into my mind, that it stands apart and alone, and I cannot measure others by it. And yet I was very fond of poor Tom," she said, pensively.
"It will be a comfort for us to think, not now so much as hereafter, that we did our best to start him in an honest career, and to give him the chance of achieving a good position," said John Claxton. "He had seen a great many of the ups and downs of life, had poor Tom Durham."
"He was a strange mixture of good and evil," said Alice; "but to me he was always uniformly kind and affectionate. He had a strange regard for me, as being, I suppose, something totally different from what he was usually brought in contact with; he took care that I should see nothing but the best and brightest side of him, though of course I knew from others that he was full of faults."
"And you loved him all the same?"
"And yet, as you say, I loved him all the same."
"And nothing you could hear now would alter your opinion of him?"
"No, John, I think--I am sure not. I am a strange being, and this is one of my characteristics, that no fault known at the time or discovered afterwards, could in the slightest degree influence my feelings towards one whom I had really loved."
"You are sure of that, Alice?" said John Claxton, bending down and looking earnestly at her.
"Quite sure," she replied.
"That is one of the sweetest traits in your sweet self," said her husband, kissing her fervently.