't keep it
back. I love the very ground he treads on! I would give my life--yes,
the life that is precious to me now, because his kindness has made it a
happy one--I tell you I would give my life--"

The next words died away on his lips; the hysterical passion rose, and
conquered him. He stretched out one of his hands with a wild gesture
of entreaty to Mr. Brock; his head sank on the window-sill and he burst
into tears.

Even then the hard discipline of the man's life asserted itself. He
expected no sympathy, he counted on no merciful human respect for human
weakness. The cruel necessity of self-suppression was present to his
mind, while the tears were pouring over his cheeks. "Give me a minute,"
he said, faintly. "I'll fight it down in a minute; I won't distress you
in this way again."

True to his resolution, in a minute he had fought it down. In a minute
more he was able to speak calmly.

"We will get back, sir, to those better thoughts which have brought me
from my room to yours," he resumed. "I can only repeat that I should
never have torn myself from the hold which this letter fastened on
me, if I had not loved Allan Armadale with all that I have in me of a
brother's love. I said to myself, 'If the thought of leaving him breaks
my heart, the thought of leaving him is wrong!' That was some hours
since, and I am in the same mind still. I can't believe--I won't
believe--that a friendship which has grown out of nothing but kindness
on one side, and nothing but gratitude on the other, is destined to lead
to an evil end. Judge, you who are a clergyman, between the dead father,
whose word is in these pages, and the living son, whose word is now on
his lips! What is it appointed me to do, now that I am breathing the
same air, and living under the same roof with the son of the man whom my
father killed--to perpetuate my father's crime by mortally injuring him,
or to atone for my father's crime by giving him the devotion of my whole
life? The last of those two faiths is my faith, and shall be my faith,
happen what may. In the strength of that better conviction, I have come
here to trust you with my father's secret, and to confess the wretched
story of my own life. In the strength of that better conviction, I can
face you resolutely with the one plain question, which marks the one
plain end of all that I have come here to say. Your pupil stands at the
starting-point of his new career, in a position singularly friendless;