Your deadly weakness--you, who were strong, poor dear--oh, let me kiss you, dear darling--till you had saved your child; Walter's terrible danger.
Oh, my dear father, spare me.

How can a poor, weak woman think of such different woes, and realize and suffer them all at once?
Spare me, dear father, spare me! Let me see you stronger; let me see _him_ safe, and then let us think of that other cruel thing, and what we ought to say to Colonel Clifford, and what we ought to do, and where we are to go." "My poor child," said Hope, faintly, with tears in his eyes, "I say no more.

Take your own time." Grace did not abuse this respite.

So soon as the doctor declared Walter out of immediate danger, and indeed safe, if cautiously treated, she returned of her own accord to the miserable subject that had been thrust aside.
After some discussion, they both agreed that they must now confide their grief to Colonel Clifford, and must quit his home, and make him master of the situation, and sole depository of the terrible secret for a time.
Hope wished to make the revelation, and spare his daughter that pain.

She assented readily and thankfully.
This was a woman's first impulse--to put a man forward.
But by-and-by she had one of her fits of hard thinking, and saw that such a revelation ought not to be made by one straightforward man to another, but with all a woman's soothing ways.