Our Mutual Friend, page 699 by Charles Dickens
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aving kissed my hand) until my husband does see it. And you will do well for yourself to see it from this time forth, Mr Twemlow, though I CAN give you no proof.'
As she moves towards the door, Mr Twemlow, attending on her, expresses his soothing hope that the condition of Mr Lammle's affairs is not irretrievable.
'I don't know,' Mrs Lammle answers, stopping, and sketching out the pattern of the paper on the wall with the point of her parasol; 'it depends. There may be an opening for him dawning now, or there may be none. We shall soon find out. If none, we are bankrupt here, and must go abroad, I suppose.'
Mr Twemlow, in his good-natured desire to make the best of it, remarks that there are pleasant lives abroad.
'Yes,' returns Mrs Lammle, still sketching on the wall; 'but I doubt whether billiard-playing, card-playing, and so forth, for the means to live under suspicion at a dirty table-d'hote, is one of them.'
It is much for Mr Lammle, Twemlow politely intimates (though greatly shocked), to have one always beside him who is attached to him in all his fortunes, and whose restraining influence will prevent him from courses that would be discreditable and ruinous. As he says it, Mrs Lammle leaves off sketching, and looks at him.
'Restraining influence, Mr Twemlow? We must eat and drink, and dress, and have a roof over our heads. Always beside him and attached in all his fortunes? Not much to boast of in that; what can a woman at my age do? My husband and I deceived one another when we married; we must bear the consequences of the deception--that is to say, bear one another, and bear the burden of scheming together for to-day's dinner and to-morrow's breakfast-- till death divorces us.'
With those words, she walks out into Duke Street, Saint James's. Mr Twemlow returning to his sofa, lays down his aching head on its slippery little horsehair bolster, with a strong internal conviction that a painful interview is not the kind of thing to be taken after the dinner pill