Your offer, coming at such a critical time, is dictated only by your noble, generous nature, by your sympathy for our misfortune.

Afterwards, you might regret it.

If my father were convicted and driven from the bench and you found you had married the daughter of a disgraced man you would be ashamed of us all, and if I saw that it would break my heart." Emotion stopped her utterance and she buried her face in her hands weeping silently.
"Shirley," said Jefferson gently, "you are wrong.

I love you for yourself, not because of your trouble.

You know that.