Would he never, never come? How long was I to bear this? How long could I bear it? “Oh me, oh me!” exclaimed the wretched Emily, in a tone that might have touched the hardest heart, I should have thought; but there was no relenting in Rosa Dartle’s smile. “What, what, shall I do!”

“Do?” returned the other. “Live happy in your own reflections! Consecrate your existence to the recollection of James Steerforth’s tenderness⁠—he would have made you his serving-man’s wife, would he not?⁠—or to feeling grateful to the upright and deserving creature who would have taken you as his gift. Or, if those proud remembrances, and the consciousness of your own virtues, and the honourable position to which they have raised you in the eyes of everything that wears the human shape, will not sustain you, marry that good man, and be happy in his condescension. If this will not do either, die! There are doorways and dustheaps for such deaths, and such despair⁠—find one, and take your flight to Heaven!”

I heard a distant foot upon the stairs. I knew it, I was certain. It was his, thank God!