Do you forgive me? Do you think God
will forgive me?"
"Can you give it up?" he asked.
"Oh! I must, I will give it up," she sobbed; "but if I do, and if you
forgive me, it can never be the same again. You will not think the same
of me--and people have seen me--they all talk about it--and I shall
always be ashamed before them. I am a disgrace to you; Aunt Bolton has
said so again and again. Then there's Charlie; I'm not fit to be his
mother. That is quite true. However long I live, people in Upton will
remember it, and gossip about, it. If they had let me die it would have
been better for us all. You could have loved me then."
"But I love you still," he answered, in a voice of tenderness and pity;
"you are very dear to me. How can I ever cease to love you?"
Yet as he spoke a terrible thought flashed through his mind that his
wife might some day become to him an object of unutterable disgust. An
image of a besotted, drunken woman always in his house, and bearing his
name, stood out for a moment sharply and distinctly before his
imagination. He shuddered, and paused; but almost before she could
notice it, he went on in low and solemn tones.
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