David Copperfieldmind and purpose.’
I pondered on those words, even while I was studiously
attending to what followed, as if they had some particular
interest, or some strange application that I could not divine.
‘There can be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of
mind and purpose’ -’no disparity in marriage like unsuit-
ability of mind and purpose.’
‘There is nothing,’ said Annie, ‘that we have in common.
I have long found that there is nothing. If I were thankful to
my husband for no more, instead of for so much, I should
be thankful to him for having saved me from the first mis-
taken impulse of my undisciplined heart.’
She stood quite still, before the Doctor, and spoke with
an earnestness that thrilled me. Yet her voice was just as
quiet as before.
‘When he was waiting to be the object of your munif-
icence, so freely bestowed for my sake, and when I was
unhappy in the mercenary shape I was made to wear, I
thought it would have become him better to have worked
his own way on. I thought that if I had been he, I would
have tried to do it, at the cost of almost any hardship. But I
thought no worse of him, until the night of his departure for
India. That night I knew he had a false and thankless heart.
I saw a double meaning, then, in Mr. Wickfield’s scrutiny
of me. I perceived, for the first time, the dark suspicion that
shadowed my life.’
‘Suspicion, Annie!’ said the Doctor. ‘No, no, no!’
‘In your mind there was none, I know, my husband!’
she returned. ‘And when I came to you, that night, to lay