This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1880 edition. Excerpt: ...themselves, can know the difference. "My father is dead, or all would have been well. As to my mother, if she had any good reason to prevent my marrying, if mine were a rash, disgraceful, or even an imprudent choice, or if I had deceived her in any way, she would have a right to be angry. But she has none. I am making an honest, honourable, creditable marriage. I can perfectly well afford to marry; even if I lose everything else, my father's property will keep us from want; and I am young, I can work. You, too--oh, my darling! if my mother knew what you are! But she ought to have known; she ought, in commonest justice to you and to me, to have taken some pains to find out." Silence said nothing. "That is, I feel, the cruelest wrong of all," Koderick went on. "To say to a son, 'You shall not marry/ offering no reasons except 'Because I do not wish it/ is as unjust as another thing which parents sometimes do--give young people like you and me every opportunity of meeting, every chance of loving one another, and then turn round and say, 'Nobody expected this, and it must not be.' I say it must be, it ought to be, or it ought to have been prevented in time. But here I am, arguing--arguing; what a pity my mother did not make me a barrister! It shows, anyhow, that I can judge the matter calmly, even though it concerns myself." Still, under all his arguments, there was visible a great agitation, a vague dread. "Perhaps when I am an old man--when we are both old people, my Silence--I may view the question differently. But I think not, I hope not. I hope I shall always believe as I do now, that right, absolute right, is the first thing in life--but, oh! love is the second. My best and dearest! the one woman in...

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Reprint of the original, first published in 1882.