"Nothing!" repeated George, in a tone of remonstrance--"nothing! Will that suffice for her, for you, or for _him?_" He pointed to Paul. "Do you not know the hope, the confidence, to which your presence here, the noble act you have done in coming to him in this terrible extremity, must give rise? Do you not feel that this is decisive, that henceforth every consideration must be abandoned by each of you, for the life which must be lived together?" It passed swiftly through Daisy's mind that if ever Paul had so pleaded his own cause, with so much conviction, so much force, so much earnestness--if ever he had made her understand the worth of true love, the false _allures_ of all beside--she would not have listened to prudence and the narrow suggestions of her worldly wisdom, but would have listened to him. It passed through her mind that this was a strong man, one who would love well and worthily, and whose wife would be honoured among women, whatever her origin. But she answered him coldly, though his words were utterly persuasive. "I cannot tell you to answer for the future, Mr. Wainwright. That question cannot be answered until it has been asked by Paul. If he lives, he will ask it; if he dies, Mrs. Derinzy will not require to know anything about me." "Be it so," said George emphatically. "I shall go there at once, and see you again this evening. Goodbye, Miss Stafford, and God bless you! You are doing the right thing now, at all events." Again she simply bent her head without speaking, and without turning her eyes from the sick man's face. George left the room with a noiseless step. When he had reached the stair-foot, Daisy covered her face with her hands, and rocked herself upon her chair, in an agony of self-upbraiding. "If he lives, he will ask me," she murmured in her torturing thoughts. "Yes, he will ask me; and I--I who a little while ago was unfit to be his wife only because of the difference in our rank--what shall I say? Far other my unfitness now--the unfitness of one who has deliberately entertained the project of degradation. Am I, who have chaffered with that vile old man about the terms on which I might be induced to become his mistress, fit to be that trusting boy's wife? Oh mother, mother! this is the result of your calculation, your worldly instructions! Yet no; why should I blame _her?_ It is the outcome of my life, of the sort of thing I have seen and known since my childhood. Oh, my God! my God! how foolish, how mad, how wicked I have been!"