With
her favorite tactics, she had, as usual, put me in the wrong, though I
soon came again to the attack.
"But he is so base that I grieve to see you with him."
"I suppose he is not very good," she responded, "but it seems to be
the way of these people among whom I have fallen, and he cannot harm
me."
"Oh! but he can. One does not go near smallpox, and there is a moral
contagion quite as dangerous, if not so perceptible, and equally to be
avoided. It must be a wonderfully healthy moral nature, pure and
chaste to the core, that will be entirely contagion-proof and safe
from it."
She hung her head in thought, and then lifted her eyes appealingly to
me. "Am I not that, Edwin? Tell me! Tell me frankly; am I not? It is
the one thing of good I have always striven for. I am so full of other
faults that if I have not that there is no good in me." Her eyes and
voice were full of tears, and I knew in my heart that I stood before
as pure a soul as ever came from the hand of God.
"You are, your majesty; never doubt," I answered.
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