You have been very cruel,--needlessly cruel. Men are so
cruel! But for all that I have known that I could have kept you,--had
it not been too late when you spoke to me. Will you not own as much
as that?"
"Of course you would have been everything to me. I should never have
thought of Violet then."
"That is the only kind word you have said to me from that day to
this. I try to comfort myself in thinking that it would have been so.
But all that is past and gone, and done. I have had my romance and
you have had yours. As you are a man, it is natural that you should
have been disturbed by a double image;--it is not so with me."
"And yet you can advise me to offer marriage to a woman,--a woman
whom I am to seek merely because she is rich?"
"Yes;--I do so advise you. You have had your romance and must now
put up with reality. Why should I so advise you but for the interest
that I have in you? Your prosperity will do me no good. I shall not
even be here to see it. I shall hear of it only as so many a woman
banished out of England hears a distant misunderstood report of what
is going on in the country she has left. But I still have regard
enough,--I will be bold, and, knowing that you will not take it
amiss, will say love enough for you,--to feel a desire that you
should not be shipwrecked.
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