Do let me atone to you in this way for your giving up what you think is your right in the matter of this ill-fated money.

O Stephen, I could be almost happy again, if you would do this! You say it would make no difference in my feeling about it, if you gave the money up only to please me, and not because you thought it wrong to keep it.

No, indeed! that is not so.

I would be happier, if you saw it as I do, of course; but, if you cannot, then the next best thing, the only thing left for my happiness, is to have you yield to my wish.
Why, Stephen, I have even felt so strongly about it as this: that sometimes, in thinking it over, I have had a wild impulse to tell you that if you did not give the money to Mrs.Jacobs I would inform the authorities that you had it, and so test the question whether you had the right to keep it or not.

Any thing, even your humiliation, has at times seemed to me better than that you should go on living in the possession of stolen money.