"Not much! but if she was sorry for me, I was quite as sorry for her."
"There was a bond of sympathy between you which you felt without understanding at the time!"
"There was; though I mistook its precise character. Seeing that she wore black, I said: 'Have you also lost your mother, my lady, and are you in deep mourning for her?' And she answered, 'I am in deep mourning for my dead happiness, child!'"
"For her dead honor, she might have said!"
"Father! the absent are like the dead; they cannot defend themselves," said Ishmael.
"That is true; and I stand rebuked! And henceforth, whatever I may think, I will never speak evil of the Countess of Hurstmonceux."
"Go farther yet, dear sir! seek an explanation with her, and my word on it she will be able to confute the calumnies, or clear up the suspicious circumstances or whatever it may have been that has shaken your confidence in her, and kept you apart so long."
"Ishmael it is a subject that I have never broached to the countess, and one that I could not endure to discuss with her!"
"What, my father? Would you forever condemn her unheard? We do not treat our worst criminals so!"
"Spare me, my son! for I have spared her!"