He
thought another moment, then said:
"There are the sick in every class: you would have those of your own to
visit. Why not leave others to visit those of theirs?"
"Then of course you would have no objection to my visiting a duchess in
the small-pox?"
Lord Gartley was on the point of saying that duchesses never took the
smallpox, but he did not, afraid Hester might know to the contrary.
"There could be no occasion for that," he said. "She would have
everything she could want."
"And the others are in lack of everything! To desert them would be to
desert the Lord. He will count it so."
"Well, certainly," said his lordship, returning on the track, "there
would be less objection in the case of the duchess, in as much as every
possible precaution would in her house be taken against the spread of
the disease. It would be horribly selfish to think only of the person
affected!"
"You show the more need that the poor should not be deserted of the rich
in their bitter necessity! Who among them is able to take the right
precautions against the spread of the disease? And if it spread among
them, there is no security against its reaching those at last who take
every possible care of themselves and none of their neighbours.
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