“Oh, John!” she sobbed, “don’t—don’t!—please don’t do that!”
“How can I help it?” he groaned. “Why am I such a coward that I don’t go and make a hole in the lake, and put myself out of my misery?”
“Oh, pray—pray don’t, John!” sobbed poor Jane, whose feelings were stirred to their deepest depth, and, believing in her old lovers earnest repentance, she was all the weak woman now. “I’m ’most heart-broken, dear, without more troubles. You don’t know what has been happening lately.”
“No,” groaned Gurdon, “I don’t know. My troubles have been enough for me.”
“What with my lady nearly dying, and Sir Murray being locked up in the library, and the door being broken open to find him in a fit, the place is dreadful, without you going on as you do.”
“Don’t, please, be hard on me, dear,” groaned Gurdon; “and if they did break open the library door, they mended it again, I suppose, for Sir Murray’s got plenty of money, ain’t he?”
“No, they didn’t stop for no mending,” sobbed Jane. “It’s enough to do to mend poor people’s sorrows here as is all driving us mad. Money’s no use where you’re miserable.”
“And are you miserable, dear?” whispered Gurdon.
“Oh, how can you ask?” sobbed Jane.
“Don’t seem like it,” said Gurdon, softly, “or you’d come down and say a few words to me before I go away, perhaps for ever; for when once the great seas are rolling between us, Jane, there’s, perhaps, no chance of our seeing one another no more.”