"I am sorry, Sir John, I am grieved to be supposed to sacrifice—to sell my poor children. I seek their good, I wish them to marry well, as I married myself, but you are harsh to call them victims. I have done my duty by them; I have obtained excellent establishments for my three eldest, and received congratulations from my friends. I really cannot receive your reproach."
"Then why are they to dissipate thought, Gertrude, and fly from reflection?"
"I'm sure I don't know, my love. One is not always prepared with reasons in an instant: marriage brings cares. They will have the same anxieties about their children's establishments that I have endured. I suppose that was my meaning. I really can't tell; but you frighten me with such violent expressions."
"Gertrude," said Sir John, seriously, "let all painful thoughts and subjects be banished between us. I exact one promise from you."
"My dear love, I never made a promise in my life."
"Then let it be made now, and stand in your mind in its singleness and sacred meaning."
"A promise would overcharge my heart, and burst from my lips, Sir John. I hate promises."
"Yet you promised at the altar, Gertrude, to love and honour, and obey your husband."
"These are words of course, love, and mean that people are to jog on as well as they can together: but what do you require in the shape of a promise?"