"Have you asked yourself the simple question, whether it is possible for me to commit such a crime, and then to confess?"
"I have to win this game, Lady Woodroffe. I think I have won it."
"It is not won yet. And believe me, sir, it will not be won unless I choose."
"We can place you in a very awkward position, anyhow."
"Mr. Richard Woodroffe, you came here to make a final appeal to me; it is my turn to make a final appeal to you. I am a woman, as perhaps you know, of very considerable importance in the world. Such a charge as you bring against me would not only crush me, if it were proved, but it would dislocate or ruin a great many associations and institutions of which I am the very soul. Thousands of orphans, working girls, Magdalens, and sinners, would lose their best friend. I am their best friend; my tongue and my pen keep up the stream which flows in to their relief. Is it not possible for that woman to think of these things? Or, there is the boy. He is partly, I suppose, what he is by education, partly by his nature; take away from him his position as a gentleman of rank and family, send him out disgraced to make his own way in the world, and he will sink like lead. You call him your half-brother. Well, Mr. Woodroffe, he is not a young man of many virtues; in fact, he has many vices."
"That I can well believe."
"If he has seven devils now, after this disclosure he will have seventy-seven devils."
"That also I can well believe. But, of course, I do not think about him."
"Then, Mr. Woodroffe, can you not persuade that poor woman to go home, to be content with what she has seen and you have proved?"
"No, I cannot."