Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens Chapter 34 Page 10

have to encounter so many struggles in my own bosom, when I take what seems to me to be the strict line of duty.’

‘This is unkind, mother,’ said Harry. ‘Do you still suppose that I am a boy ignorant of my own mind, and mistaking the impulses of my own soul?’

‘I think, my dear son,’ returned Mrs. Maylie, laying her hand upon his shoulder, ‘that youth has many generous impulses which do not last; and that among them are some, which, being gratified, become only the more fleeting. Above all, I think’ said the lady, fixing her eyes on her son’s face, ‘that if an enthusiastic, ardent, and ambitious man marry a wife on whose name there is a stain, which, though it originate in no fault of hers, may be visited by cold and sordid