We all know with how strong a bias we regard our own side of any question, and he regarded his side in this question with a very strong bias. Nevertheless he had refrained from a word, and would have refrained, had she not stopped him.
When she took hold of him by the coat, he looked for a moment into her face, and thought that in its trouble it was very sweet. She leaned somewhat against him as she spoke, and he wished that she would lean against him altogether. There was about her a quiet power of endurance, and at the same time a comeliness and a womanly softness which seemed to fit her altogether for his wants and wishes. As he looked with his dull face across into the square, no physiognomist would have declared of him that at that moment he was suffering from love, or thinking of a woman that was dear to him. But it was so with him, and the physiognomist, had one been there, would have been wrong. She had now asked him a question, which he was bound to answer in some way:--"What ought I to do, John?"
He turned slowly round and walked with her, away from their destination, round by the south side of the square, and then up along the blank wall on the east side, nearly to the passage into Holborn, and back again all round the enclosed space. She, while she was speaking to him and listening to him, hardly remembered where she was or whither she was going.
"I thought," said he, in answer to her question, "that you intended to ask Mr Slow's advice?"
"I didn't mean to do more than tell him what should be done. He is not a friend, you know, John."
"It's customary to ask lawyers their advice on such subjects."
"I'd rather have yours, John. But, in truth, what I want you to say is, that I am right in doing this,--right in keeping my promise to my brother, and providing for his children."
"Like most people, Margaret, you want to be advised to follow your own counsel."
"God knows that I want to do right, John. I want to do nothing else, John, but what's right. As to this money, I care but little for it for myself."
"It is your own, and you have a right to enjoy it."
"I don't know much about enjoyment. As to enjoyment, it seems to me to be pretty much the same whether a person is rich or poor. I always used to hear that money brought care, and I'm sure I've found it so since I had any."