“No one loves me, - no one cares for me, but you, mother.”

“I wish I could love people as you do, Molly!''Don't you?' said the other, in surprise.'No. A good number of people love me, I believe, or at least they think they do; but I never seem to care much for any one. I do believe I love you, little Molly, whom I have only known for ten days, better than any one.”

“I am the mother that bore you, and your sorrow is my agony; and if you don't hate her, i do'Then, mother, you make me love her more. She is unjustly treated by you, and I must make the balance even.”

“Oh, my Margaret--my Margaret! no one can tell what you are to me! Dead--cold as you lie there you are the only woman I ever loved! Oh, Margaret--Margaret!”

“Oh! that look of love!" continued he, between his teeth, as he bolted himself into his own private room. "And that cursed lie; which showed some terrible shame in the background, to be kept from the light in which I thought she lived perpetually! Oh, Margaret, Margaret! Mother, how you have tortured me! Oh! Margaret, could you not have loved me? I am but uncouth and hard, but I would never have led you into any falsehood for me.”

“I won't say she was silly, but I think one of us was silly, and it was not me.”

“Take care. If you do not speak – I shall claim you as my own in some strange presumptuous way. Send me away at once, if I must go; – Margaret! –”