"Very poorly made then!" said the earl with a sneer. "We might as
well have been made in some other body's image!"
Donal thought with himself.
Did you ever know a good woman, my lord?" he asked.
"Know a good woman?--Hundreds of them!--The other sort was more to
my taste! but there was my own mother! She was rather hard on my
father now and then, but she was a good woman."
"Suppose you had been in her image, what then?"
"You would have had some respect for me!"
"Then she was nearer the image of God than you?"
"Thousands of miles!"
"Did you ever know a bad woman?"
"Know a bad woman? Hundreds that would take your heart's blood as
you slept to make a philtre with!"
"Then you saw a difference between such a woman and your mother?"
"The one was of heaven, the other of hell--that was all the little
difference!"
"Did you ever know a bad woman grow better?"
"No, never.--Stop! let me see" I did once know a woman--she was a
married woman too--that made it all the worse--all the better I
mean: she took poison--in good earnest, and died--died, sir--died, I
say--when she came to herself, and knew what she had done! That was
the only woman I ever knew that grew better. How long she might have
gone on better if she hadn't taken the poison, I can't tell. That
fixed her good, you see!"
"If she had gone on, she might have got as good as your mother?"
"Oh, hang it! no; I did not say that!"
"I mean, with God teaching her all the time--for ten thousand years,
say--and she always doing what he told her!"
"Oh, well! I don't know anything about that.
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