The Mountain Girl by Emma Payne Erskine Chapter 14 Page 14

“My dear, my dear, you forget, he has promised to repent and live a different life. If he does, things will be better than we now see them. If he does not change, then we may interfere — perhaps.”

“I know, James. But — but — suppose he repents and she becomes his wife, and puts aside all her natural tastes, and the studies she loves, and goes on living with him there on the home place, and he does the best he can — even. Don’t you see that her nature is fine and — and so different — even at the best, James, for her it will be death in life. And then there is the terrible chance, after all, that he might go back and be like his father before him, and then what?”

“Well, their lives and destinies are not in our hands; we