Read "John Halifax, Gentleman" by Dinah Mulock online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
John and I sat over the study fire till long after midnight.
Many an anxious watch I had kept with him, but none sadder than this. Because now, for the first time, our house was divided against itself. A sorrow had entered it, not from without but from within -- a sorrow which we could not meet and bear, as a family. Alas! darker and darker had the bitter truth forced itself upon us, that neither joy nor affliction would ever find us as a family again.