. . .
But no, I will not reproach him. Have I not known since the day on St.
Mary's Rock that above all else he is a born gentleman?
And yet. . . . And yet. . . .
MEMORANDUM BY MARTIN CONRAD
And yet I was a fool, or in spite of everything I should have spoken to
Daniel O'Neill before he left Rome. I should have said to him:
"Do you know that the man to whom you are going to marry your daughter
is a profligate and a reprobate? If you _do_ know this, are you
deliberately selling her, body and soul, to gratify your lust of rank
and power and all the rest of your rotten aspirations?"
That is what I ought to have done, but didn't do. I was afraid of being
thought to have personal motives--of interfering where I wasn't wanted,
of butting in when I had no right.
Yet I felt I _had_ a right, and I had half a mind to throw up everything
and go back to Ellan. But the expedition was the big chance I had been
looking forward to and I could not give it up.
So I resolved to write. But writing isn't exactly my job, and it took me
a fortnight to get anything done to my satisfaction.
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