“Why?”
“Why, my dear madam? Now come. You know me pretty well by this time. Do you think I’d go hanging after such a woman for the sake of her money, and be the miserable reptile who married her for that?”
“No; I think you like her for herself alone.”
“I wish she hadn’t a penny; and then again, if she hadn’t, I couldn’t marry her.”
“Indeed?”
“Now, how could I drag such a woman down from a life of refinement and luxury, to be the wife of a poor doctor? No, madam; it is all a dream. We shall go on, sneering on her part, laughing and defiant on mine, and, I believe, all the time with sore hearts hidden beneath it all. There, you have my secret out bare before you. Now, you can laugh at the misogynist of a doctor, and think as little of him as you like.”
“Yes,” said Aunt Sophia, laying her hand upon his arm softly, and looking almost tenderly in his face, “you are a strange couple.—And now,” she continued, “tell me about my poor nephew. Tell me frankly, have you any hope of his becoming the man he was?”
“Hope? Yes,” he replied gloomily; “but little more. I have done and am doing all I can; but the human frame with all its nerves is a terrible mystery, in whose darkness one moves with awe.”
“Then you give him up?”
“Give him up!” said Scales, with a short laugh—“give him up? Miss Raleigh; you don’t know me yet. I’ll never give him up. He’s my study—the study of my life, and I shall fight on out of sheer obstinacy. I’ve plenty of amour propre, and it’s touched here. I’ve learned one thing about him, and that’s my lighthouse by which I steer.”