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little household we three should make together; but things have got beyond that, don't you see? They got beyond that long ago. We shall stay abroad at any rate—it 's ever so much easier, and it 's our affair and nobody else's: it's no one's business but ours on all the blessed earth. I don't say that for Mrs. Wix, poor dear—I do her absolute justice. I respect her; I see what she means; she has done me a lot of good. But there are the facts. There they are, simply. And here am I, and here are you. And she won't come round. She 's right, from her point of view. I 'm talking to you in the most extraordinary way—I 'm always talking to you in the most extraordinary way, ain't I? One would think you were about sixty, and that I—I don't know what any one would think I am. Unless a beastly cad!" he suggested. "I 've been awfully worried, and this is what it has come to. You 've done us the most tremendous good, and you 'll do it still and always, don't you see? We can't let you go—you're everything. There are the facts, as I say. She is your mother now, Mrs. Beale, by what has happened, and I, in the same way, I 'm your father. No one can contradict that, and