‘We’ll have no one. Only Marcella and I.’
Again a long silence.
‘Marcella is going in for comparative philology,’ Christian resumed, with the gentle tone in which he invariably spoke of his sister. ‘What a mind that girl has! I never knew any woman of half her powers.’
Godwin said nothing.
‘No,’ continued the other fervently, ‘nor of half her goodness. I sometimes think that no mortal could come nearer to our ideal of moral justice and purity. If it were not for her, I should long ago have gone to perdition, in one way or another. It’s her strength, not my own, that has saved me. I daresay you know this?’
‘There’s some truth in it, I believe,’ Peak answered, his eye wandering.
‘See how circumstances can affect one’s judgment. If, just about the time I first knew you, I had abandoned
