“Don't you perceive, my dear friend,” said Repton, calmly, “how you are exaggerating everything,--not alone _your own_ culpability, but his resentment! Grant that you ought not to have left Mary behind you,--I 'm sure I said everything I could against it,--what more easy than to repair the wrong?” “No, no, Repton, you 're quite mistaken. Take my word for it, you don't know that girl. She has taught herself to believe that her place is there,--that it is her duty to live amongst the people. She may exaggerate to her own mind the good she does; she may fancy a thousand things as to the benefit she bestows; but she cannot, by any self-deception, over-estimate the results upon her own heart, which she has educated to feel as only they do who live amongst the poor! To take her away from this would be a cruel sacrifice; and for what?--a world she would n't care for, couldn't comprehend.” “Then what was to have been done?” “I 'll tell you, Repton; if it was _her_ duty to stay there, it was doubly _ours_ to have remained also. When she married,” added he, after a pause,--“when she had got a home of her own,--then, of course, it would have been quite different! Heaven knows,” said he, sighing, “we have little left to tie us to anything or anywhere; and as to myself, it is a matter of the most perfect indifference whether I drag out the year or two that may remain to me on the shores of Galway or beside the Adriatic!” “I can't bear this,” cried Repton, angrily. “If ever there was a man well treated by fortune, you are he.” “I 'm not complaining.” “Not complaining! but, hang it, sir, that is not enough! You should be overflowing with gratitude; your life ought to be active with benevolence; you should be up and doing, wherever ample means and handsome encouragement could assist merit or cheer despondency. I like your notion that you don't complain! Why, if you did, what should be done by those who really do travel the shady side of existence,--who are weighted with debt, bowed down with daily difficulties, crippled with that penury that eats into a man's nature till his very affections grow sordid, and his very dreams are tormented with his duns! Think of the poor fellows with ailing wives and sickly children, toiling daily, not to give them luxuries,--not to supply them with what may alleviate weariness or distract suffering, but bare sustenance,--coarse diet and coarser dress! Ah, my dear Martin, that Romanist plan of fasting one day in the week would n't be a bad institution were we to introduce it into our social code. If you and I could have, every now and then, our feelings of privation, just to teach us what others experience all the week through, we 'd have, if not more sympathy with narrow fortune, at least more thankfulness for its opposite.” “Her Ladyship begs you will read this note, sir,” said a servant, presenting an open letter to Martin. He took it, and having perused it, handed it to Repton, who slowly read the following lines:--