Page:The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (emended first edition), Volume 3.djvu/155

Rh welfare;—and more than this ought not to be; for you are young, Gilbert, and you ought to marry—and will some time, though you may think it impossible now:—and though I hardly can say I wish you to forget me, I know it is right that you should, both for your own happiness and that of your future wife;—and therefore I must and will wish it," she added resolutely.

"And you are young too, Helen," I boldly replied, "and when that profligate scoundrel has run through his career, you will give your hand to me—I'll wait till then."

But she would not leave me this support. Independently of the moral evil of basing our hopes upon the death of another, who, if unfit for this world, was at least no less so for the next, and whose amelioration would thus become our bane and his greatest transgression our greatest benefit,—she maintained it to be madness: many men of Mr. Huntingdon's habits had lived to a ripe though miserable old age;—