How am I to set about it if you ruin me?"
Sibylla put her fingers to her ears. "I can't stand to listen when you
preach, Lionel. It is as bad as a sermon."
[Illustration: Sibylla put her fingers to her ears.]
It was ever thus. He could not attempt to reason with her. Anything like
sensible conversation she could not, or would not, hold. Lionel,
considerate to her as he ever was, felt provoked.
"Do you know that this unfortunate affair of Alice Hook's is laid
remotely to me?" he said, with a sternness, which he could not help, in
his tone. "People are saying that if I gave them decent dwellings,
decent conduct would ensue. It is so. God knows that I feel its truth
more keenly than my reproachers."
"The dwellings are good enough for the poor."
"Sibylla! You cannot think it. The laws of God and man alike demand a
change. Child," he continued in a softer tone, as he took her hand in
his, "let us bring the case home to ourselves. Suppose that you and I
had to sleep in a room a few feet square, no chimney, no air, and that
others tenanted it with us? Girls and boys growing up--nay, grown up,
some of them; men and women as we are, Sibylla.
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