"There are those whose business it is to look after them."
"I am one of those," returned Hester.
"Well," answered his lordship, "for the sake of argument we will allow it has been your business; but how can you imagine it your business any longer?"
Indignation, a fire always ready "laid" in Hester's bosom, but seldom yet lighted by lord Gartley, burst into flame, and she spoke as he had never heard her speak before.
"I am aware, my lord," she said, "that I must by and by have new duties to perform, but I have yet to learn that they must annihilate the old. The claims of love cannot surely obliterate those of friendship! The new should make the old better, not sweep it away."
"But, my dear girl, the thing is preposterous!" exclaimed his lordship. "Don't you see you will enter on a new life! In the most ordinary cases even, the duties of a wife are distinct from those of an unmarried woman."
"But the duties of neither can supersede those of a human being. If the position of a wife is higher than that of an unmarried woman, it must enable her to do yet better the things that were her duty as a human being before."
"But if it be impossible she should do the same things?"
"Whatever is impossible settles its own question. I trust I shall never desire to attempt the impossible."
"You have begun to attempt it now."