Anne Bronte: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

33. CHAPTER XXXIII (continued)

'No matter,' I answered, 'to you; you have no longer any regard for me it appears; and I have no longer any for you.'

'Hal-lo! what the devil is this?' he muttered.

'I would leave you to-morrow,' continued I, 'and never again come under this roof, but for my child' - I paused a moment to steady, my voice.

'What in the devil's name is this, Helen?' cried he. 'What can you be driving at?'

'You know perfectly well. Let us waste no time in useless explanation, but tell me, will you -?'

He vehemently swore he knew nothing about it, and insisted upon hearing what poisonous old woman had been blackening his name, and what infamous lies I had been fool enough to believe.

'Spare yourself the trouble of forswearing yourself and racking your brains to stifle truth with falsehood,' I coldly replied. 'I have trusted to the testimony of no third person. I was in the shrubbery this evening, and I saw and heard for myself.'

This was enough. He uttered a suppressed exclamation of consternation and dismay, and muttering, 'I shall catch it now!' set down his candle on the nearest chair, and rearing his back against the wall, stood confronting me with folded arms.

'Well, what then?' said he, with the calm insolence of mingled shamelessness and desperation.

'Only this,' returned I; 'will you let me take our child and what remains of my fortune, and go?'

'Go where?'

'Anywhere, where he will be safe from your contaminating influence, and I shall be delivered from your presence, and you from mine.'

'No.'

'Will you let me have the child then, without the money?'