Now, I do not consider that, at present, it is at all necessary.' 'What else is left me ?' returned the prisoner.

'To eat my way through these walls with my teeth ?' 'Something easier than that,' returned his friend.

'Promise me that you will talk no more of these fancies of yours--idle, foolish things, quite beneath a man--and I'll tell you what I mean.' 'Tell me,' said the other.
'Your worthy lady with the tender conscience; your scrupulous, virtuous, punctilious, but not blindly affectionate wife--' 'What of her ?' 'Is now in London.' 'A curse upon her, be she where she may!' 'That's natural enough.

If she had taken her annuity as usual, you would not have been here, and we should have been better off.

But that's apart from the business.