"You tell me to go," he says, in a voice choked and altered with emotion, "and in the very act of telling me you cry. Which am I to believe, your words or your tears?" "My words," she answers, trying to speak collectedly, and by gaining calmness herself to bring it back to him. "I have been dishonourable once--you know it; don't let me have the remorse of thinking that I made an honourable man palter with temptation--made him sully his honour for me. If _I_ am the inducement that keeps you here, _go; for my sake, go!_ I say it a hundred times; promise me you will go--_soon, this week._ Let me hear you swear it; you will not break your oath, I know!" He is silent; hesitating to take that step of irrevocable banishment--banishment from the woman that he cast away in righteous wrath, and in whose frail life his own now seems to be bound up. "Swear!" she says again, earnestly, with a resolute look in her soft face. "I beg it of you as a favour; for if you won't, though my only chance of daily bread lies here, I must go to-night." The determination in her voice recalls him to his senses. "I will not drive you to such extremities," he says, coldly. "Give me only till to-morrow morning--twenty-four hours cannot make much difference to you, and a man going to be hanged likes to have a little respite--give me till to-morrow, and I will swear whatever you wish." "That is right," she answers, trying to smile through her tears. "Some day you will thank me; you will say, 'She was a bad girl, but she did me one good turn!'" The people are flocking out of church; the squire, in a low pony-chaise, driven by a groom as old and toothless as himself, and drawn by a pony (considering the comparative ages of horses and men) also nearly as old, is bowling gently up the drive. "I must go," Esther says, rising hastily; "Mrs. Blessington hates red eyes as she hates a black dress, and for the same reason!" CHAPTER XXXVIII. At Blessington no one goes to church twice. It is the bounden duty of every Christian man, woman, and child to go to church in the morning; it is the duty of only the clergyman, the school-children, and the organist to go to church in the afternoon. The old people sleep side by side in the blaze of the saloon-fire; being, both of them, happily deaf, they are undisturbed by each other's grunts and snores.