“A name? what name?” Then Caroline told the doctor the name Mr. Hunt had used; and if Firmin’s face usually looked wicked, I daresay it did not seem very angelical when he heard how this odious name had been applied to his son. “Can he do Philip a mischief?” Caroline continued. “I thought I was bound to tell his father. Look here, Dr. F., I don’t want to do my dear boy a harm. — But suppose what you told me last night isn’t true — as I don’t think you much mind! — mind — saying things as are incorrect you know, when us women are in the case.

But suppose when you played the villain, thinking only to take in a poor innocent girl of sixteen, it was you who were took in, and that I was your real wife after all? There would be a punishment!”“I should have an honest and good wife, Caroline,” said the doctor, with a groan.“This would be a punishment, not for you, but for my poor Philip,” the woman goes on. “What has he done, that his honest name should be took from him — and his fortune perhaps? I have been lying broad awake all night thinking of him. Ah, George Brandon! Why, why did you come to my poor old father’s house, and bring this misery down on me, and on your child unborn?”

“On myself, the worst of all,” says the doctor.“You deserve it. But it’s us innocent that has had, or will have to suffer most. O George Brandon! Think of a poor child, flung away, and left to starve and die, without even so much as knowing your real name! Think of your boy, perhaps brought to shame and poverty through your fault!”
“Do you suppose I don’t often think of my wrong?” says the doctor. “That it does not cause me sleepless nights, and hours of anguish? Ah! Caroline!” and he looks in the glass. — “I am not shaved, and it’s very unbecoming,” he thinks; that is, if I may dare to read his thoughts, as I do to report his.

“You think of your wrong now it may be found out, I daresay!” says Caroline. “Suppose this Hunt turns against you? He is desperate; mad for drink and money; has been in gaol — as he said this very night to me and my papa. He’ll do or say anything. If you treat him hard, and Philip have treated him hard — not harder than served him right though — he’ll pull the house down and himself under it, but he’ll be revenged. Perhaps he drank so much last night, that he may have forgot. But I fear he means mischief, and I came here to say so, and hoping that you might be kept on your guard, Doctor F., and if you have to quarrel with him, I don’t know what you ever will do, I am sure — no more than if you had to fight a chimney-sweep in the street. I have been awake all night thinking, and as soon as ever I saw the daylight, I determined I would run and tell you.”