"
As she rose, and turned her beaming face towards the fallen man,
implying that her mediation had been successful, he advanced a
step, and without raising his eyes, addressed himself to Redlaw.
"You are so generous," he said, " - you ever were - that you will
try to banish your rising sense of retribution in the spectacle
that is before you. I do not try to banish it from myself, Redlaw.
If you can, believe me."
The Chemist entreated Milly, by a gesture, to come nearer to him;
and, as he listened looked in her face, as if to find in it the
clue to what he heard.
"I am too decayed a wretch to make professions; I recollect my own
career too well, to array any such before you. But from the day on
which I made my first step downward, in dealing falsely by you, I
have gone down with a certain, steady, doomed progression. That, I
say."
Redlaw, keeping her close at his side, turned his face towards the
speaker, and there was sorrow in it. Something like mournful
recognition too.
"I might have been another man, my life might have been another
life, if I had avoided that first fatal step. I don't know that it
would have been. I claim nothing for the possibility. Your sister
is at rest, and better than she could have been with me, if I had
continued even what you thought me: even what I once supposed
myself to be.
Pages:
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142