"I do love him. I
have always loved him. I shall love him to the end. He is all my life
to me."
"Shame should prevent your telling it," said Lord Chiltern.
"I feel no shame. There is no disgrace in love. I did disgrace
myself when I gave the hand for which he asked to another man,
because,--because--" But she was too noble to tell her brother even
then that at the moment of her life to which she was alluding she had
married the rich man, rejecting the poor man's hand, because she had
given up all her fortune to the payment of her brother's debts. And
he, though he had well known what he had owed to her, and had never
been easy till he had paid the debt, remembered nothing of all this
now. No lending and paying back of money could alter the nature
either of his feelings or his duty in such an emergency as this.
"And, mind you," she continued, turning to her sister-in-law, "there
is no place for the shame of which he is thinking," and she pointed
her finger out at her brother. "I love him,--as a mother might love
her child, I fancy; but he has no love for me; none;--none.
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