since I parted from her.  She has had brain-fever.  She has been in the hospital.  She is now prostrate with misery.  While she suffered, I—­I can’t look back on myself.  If I had to plead before you for more than manly consideration, I could touch you.  I am my own master, and am ready to subsist by my own efforts; there is no necessity for me to do more than say I abide by the choice I make, and my own actions.  In deciding to marry her, I do a good thing—­I do a just thing.  I will prove to you that I have done a wise thing.

“Let me call to your recollection what you did me the honour to remark of my letters from Italy.  Those were written with her by my side.  Every other woman vexed me.  This one alone gives me peace, and nerve to work.  If I did not desire to work, should I venture to run the chances of an offence to you?  Your girls of society are tasteless to me.  And they don’t makes wives to working barristers.  No, nor to working Members.

“They are very ornamental and excellent, and, as I think you would call them, accomplished.  All England would leap to arms to defend their incontestible superiority to their mothers and their duties.  I have not the wish to stand opposed to my countrymen on any question, although I go to other shores, and may be called upon to make capital out of opposition.  They are admirable young persons, no doubt.  I do not offer you a drab for your daughter-in-law, sir.  If I rise, she will be equal to my station.  She has the manners of a lady; a lady, I say; not of the modern young lady; with whom, I am happy to think, she does not come into competition.  She has not been sedulously trained to pull her way, when she is to go into harness with a yokefellow.

“But I am laying myself open to the charge of feeling my position weak, seeing that I abuse the contrary one.  Think what you will of me, sir, you will know that I have obeyed my best instinct and my soundest judgement in this matter; I need not be taught, that if it is my destiny to leave England I lose the association with him who must ever be my dearest friend.  And few young men can say as much of one standing in the relation of father.”

With this, Edward finished; not entirely to his satisfaction; for he had spoken with too distinct a sincerity to please his own critical taste, which had been educated to delight in acute antithesis and culminating sentences—­the grand Biscayan billows of rhetorical utterance, in comparison wherewith his talk was like the little chopping waves of a wind-blown lake.  But he had, as he could see, produced an impression.  His father stood up.

“We shall be always friends; I hope,” Sir William said.  “As regards a provision for you, suitable to your estate, that will be arranged.  You must have what comforts you have been taught to look to.  At the same time, I claim a personal freedom for my own actions.”

“Certainly, sir,” said Edward, not conceiving any new development in these.