re worse! Whose fault is that?"

"My own; I'm not ashamed to confess it!"

"Would to God you were!" said Donal: "you shame your mother in being
worse than she was. You were made in the image of God, but you don't
look like him now any more than you look like your mother. I have a
father and mother, my lord, as like God as they can look!"

"Of course! of course! In their position there are no such temptations
as in ours!"

"I am sure of one thing, my lord--that you will never be at any peace
until you begin to show the image in which you were made. By that time
you will care for nothing so much as that he should have his way with
you and the whole world."

"It will be long before I come to that!"

"Probably; but you will never have a moment's peace till you begin. It
is no use talking though. God has not made you miserable enough yet."

"I am more miserable than you can think."

"Why don't you cry to him to deliver you?"

"I would kill myself if it weren't for one thing."

"It is from yourself he would deliver you."

"I would, but that I want to put off seeing my wife as long as I can."

"I thought you wanted to see her!"

"I long for her sometimes more than tongue can tell."

"And you don't want to see her?"

"Not yet; not just yet. I should like to be a little better--to do
something or other--I don't know what--first. I doubt if she would
touch me now--with that small, firm hand she would catch hold of me
with when I hurt her. By Jove, if she had been a man, she would have
made her mark in the world! She had a will and a way with her! If it
hadn't been that she loved me--me, do you hear, you dog!--though
there's nobody left to care a worm-eaten nut about me, it makes me
proud as Lucifer merely to think of it! I don't care if there's never
another to love me to all eternity! I have been loved as never man was
loved! All for my own sake, mind you! In the way of money I was no
great catch; and for the rank, she never got any good of that, nor
would if she had lived till I was earl; she had a conscience--which I
never had--and would never have consented to be called countess. 'It
will be no worse than passing for my wife now,' I would say. 'What's
either but an appearance? What's any thing of all the damned humbug but
appearance? One appearance is as good as another appearance!' She would
only smile--smile fit to make a mule sad! And then when her baby was
dying, and she wanted me to take her for a minut