take some of it, darling! Why should you not? I would take it from
you, if you had it and I had not. I could give you in a very few years as
much as this you have found and never miss it. Do let me atone to you in
this way for your giving up what you think is your right in the matter of
this ill-fated money. O Stephen, I could be almost happy again, if you
would do this! You say it would make no difference in my feeling about it,
if you gave the money up only to please me, and not because you thought it
wrong to keep it. No, indeed! that is not so. I would be happier, if you
saw it as I do, of course; but, if you cannot, then the next best thing,
the only thing left for my happiness, is to have you yield to my wish.
Why, Stephen, I have even felt so strongly about it as this: that
sometimes, in thinking it over, I have had a wild impulse to tell you that
if you did not give the money to Mrs. Jacobs I would inform the
authorities that you had it, and so test the question whether you had the
right to keep it or not. Any thing, even your humiliation, has at times
seemed to me better than that you should go on living in the possession of
stolen money. You can see from this how deeply I felt about the thing. I
suppose I really never could have done this. At the last moment, I should
have found it impossible to array myself against you in any such public
way; but, oh, my darling, I should always have felt as if I helped steal
the money, if I kept quiet about it. You see I use a past tense already, I
feel so certain that you will give it up now. Dear, dear Stephen, you will
never be sorry: as soon as it is done, you will be glad. I wish that gold
had been all sunk in the sea, and never seen light again, the sight of it
has cost us so dear. Darling, I can't tell you what a load has rolled off
my heart. Oh, if you could know what it has been to me to have this cloud
over my thoughts of you! I have always been so proud of you,
Stephen,--your patience, your bravery. In my thought, you have stood
always for my ideal of the beautiful alliance of gentleness and strength.
Darling, we owe something to those who love us: we owe it to them not to
disappoint them. If I were to be tempted to do some dishonorable thing, I
should say to myself: 'No, for I must be what Stephen believes me. It is
not only that I will not grieve him: still more, I will not disappoint
him.'"

Mercy wrote on and on. The reaction from the pent-up grief, the prolong