"
"Why don't you cry to him to deliver you?"
"I would kill myself if it weren't for one thing."
"It is from yourself he would deliver you."
"I would, but that I want to put off seeing my wife as long as I
can."
"I thought you wanted to see her!"
"I long for her sometimes more than tongue can tell."
"And you don't want to see her?"
"Not yet; not just yet. I should like to be a little better--to do
something or other--I don't know what--first. I doubt if she would
touch me now--with that small, firm hand she would catch hold of me
with when I hurt her. By Jove, if she had been a man, she would have
made her mark in the world! She had a will and a way with her! If it
hadn't been that she loved me--me, do you hear, you dog!--though
there's nobody left to care a worm-eaten nut about me, it makes me
proud as Lucifer merely to think of it! I don't care if there's
never another to love me to all eternity! I have been loved as never
man was loved! All for my own sake, mind you! In the way of money I
was no great catch; and for the rank, she never got any good of
that, nor would if she had lived till I was earl; she had a
conscience--which I never had--and would never have consented to be
called countess. 'It will be no worse than passing for my wife now,'
I would say. 'What's either but an appearance? What's any thing of
all the damned humbug but appearance? One appearance is as good as
another appearance!' She would only smile--smile fit to make a mule
sad! And then when her baby was dying, and she wanted me to take her
for a minute, and I wouldn't! She laid her down, and got what she
wanted herself, and when she went to take the child again, the
absurd little thing was--was--gone--dead, I mean gone dead, never to
cry any more! There it lay motionless, like a lump of white clay.
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