And after a while I sent Jane to learn a business. Do you know
why I did that? Can you think why I brought up the child as if I'd
only had just enough to keep us both, and never gave a sign that I
could have made a rich lady of her?'
In asking the question, he bent forward and laid his hand on
Sidney's shoulder. His eyes gleamed with that light which betrays
the enthusiast, the idealist. As he approached the explanation to
which his story had tended, the signs of age and weakness
disappeared before the intensity of his feeling. Sidney understood
now why he had always been conscious of something in the man's mind
that was not revealed to him, of a life-controlling purpose but
vaguely indicated by the general tenor of Michael's opinions. The
latter's fervour affected him, and he replied with emotion:
'You wish Jane to think of this money as you do yourself--not to
regard it as wealth, but as the means of bringing help to the
miserable.'
'That is my thought, Sidney. It came to me in that form whilst I was
sitting by her bed, when she was ill at Mrs. Peckover's. I knew
nothing of her character then, and the idea I had might have come to
nothing through her turning out untrustworthy.
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