"Why can you not?"
"Because he is my husband—one whom I have chosen for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love, to cherish, and to obey, till death do us part—one from whom death alone shall part me, for I love him, he loves me, and by his side I can smilingly await poverty, even ruin."
"Even infamy!" exclaimed Vyner.
"Even infamy!" she replied, in a low sad tone.
"This is madness."
"It is love—it is duty. I know the wretched fate which must befall us. I foresee it: but if it had already fallen, I should say the same. I cannot leave him! I may be miserable; we may be brought to beggary; my child may want every necessary—oh! I have not shut my eyes to that terrible prospect! I have seen it; it has wrung my heart, but I cannot—would not, if I could—leave him who is all my happiness. Cecil is more than my husband: he is all that I hold dearest in life: he is the father of that child whose future you so gloomily foresee; shall that child—shall my child not smile upon its father? You do not know what you ask."
"I ask you to be happy."
"I am so. Without Cecil I could not be so. Let misfortune come to me in any shape, so that it rob me not of him, and I can bear it; only not that—only not that!"
"Bless you for those words, my own beloved!" said a voice which made them both start and look up.
Cecil stood before them. He had overheard the greater part of their conversation, and had opened the door without their noticing it, absorbed as they were in their own emotions.