erious business may require you to be absent
for a whole year. Fancy my being left at home all that time. You
don't think of it; but you have never left me for a single night
since you first brought me to live here."

"And you have never been away."

"Oh, no! why should I go away? What business can a woman have to move
from home, especially such a woman as I am."

"You are just like Mrs Baggett. She always talks of women with
supreme contempt. And yet she is just as proud of herself as the
queen when you come to contradict her."

"You never contradict me."

"Perhaps the day may come when I shall." Then he recollected himself,
and added, "Or perhaps the day may never come. Never mind. Put up
my things for one week. At any rate I shall not be above a week
gone." Then she left him, and went away to his room to do what was
necessary.

She knew the business on which he was about to travel to London, as
well as though he had discussed with her the whole affair. In the
course of the last two or three days there had been moments in which
she had declared to herself that he was cruel. There had been moments
in which she had fainted almost with sorrow when she thought of the
life which fate had in store for her. There must be endless misery,
while there might have been joy, so ecstatic in its nature as to make
it seem to her to be perennial. Then she had almost fallen, and had
declared him to be preternaturally cruel. But these moments had been
short, and had endured only while she had allowed herself to dream
of the ecstatic joy, which she confessed to herself to be an unfit
condition of life for her. And then she had told herself that Mr
Whittlestaff was not cruel, and that she herself was no better than a
weak, poor, flighty creature unable to look in its face life and all
its realities. And then she would be lost in amazement as she thought
of herself and all her vacillations.

She now was resolved to take his part, and to fight his battle to
the end. When he had told her that he was going up to London, and
going up on business as to which he could tell her nothing, she knew
that it behoved her to prevent him from taking the journey. John
Gordon should be allowed to go in quest of his diamonds, and Mr
Whittlestaff should be persuaded not to interfere with him. It was
for her sake, and not for John Gordon's, that he was about to make
the journey. He had asked her whether she were willing to marry him,
and she had tol