deprecate this marriage. Child, do you remember your mother?

ARETHUSA. Remember her? Ah, if she had been here to-day!

GAUNT. It is thirteen years since she departed, and took with her the
whole sunshine of my life. Do you remember the manner of her departure?
You were a child, and cannot; but I can and do. Remember? shall I ever
forget? Here or hereafter, ever forget! Ten years she was my wife, and
ten years she lay a-dying. Arethusa, she was a saint on earth; and it
was I that killed her.

ARETHUSA. Killed her? my mother? You?

GAUNT. Not with my hand; for I loved her. I would not have hurt one hair
upon her head. But she got her death by me, as sure as by a blow.

ARETHUSA. I understand--I can see; you brood on trifles,
misunderstandings, unkindnesses you think them; though my mother never
knew of them, or never gave them a second thought. It is natural when
death has come between.

GAUNT. I married her from Falmouth. She was comely as the roe; I see her
still--her dove's eyes and her Smile! I was older than she; and I had a
name for hardness, a hard and wicked man; but she loved me--my
Hester!--and she took me as I was. O how I repaid her trust! Well, our
child was born to us; and we named her after the brig I had built and
sailed, the old craft whose likeness--older than you, girl--stands there
above our heads. And so far, that was happiness. But she yearned for my
salvation; and it was there I thwarted her. My sins were a burden upon
her spirit, a shame to her in this world, her terror in the world to
come. She talked much and often of my leaving the devil's trade I sailed
in. She had a tender and a Christian heart, and she would weep and pray
for the poor heathen creatures that I bought and sold and shipped in
misery, till my conscience grew hot within me. I've put on my hat, and
gone out and made oath that my next cargo should be my last; but it
never was, that oath was never kept. So I sailed again and again for the
Guinea coast, until the trip came that was to be my last indeed. Well,
it fell out that we had good luck trading, and I stowed the brig with
these poor heathen as full as she would hold. We had a fair run westward
till we were past the line; but one night the wind rose, and there came
a hurricane, and for seven days we were tossed on the deep seas, in the
hardest straits, and every hand on deck. For several days they were
battened down: all that time we heard their cries and lamentations, but