“I wish to go; I am unable.”

“Have you had a scene together?”

“I have expressed my wish.”

“In roundabout?—­girl’s English?”

“Quite clearly; oh, very clearly.”

“Have you spoken to your father?”

“I have.”

“And what does Dr. Middleton say?”

“It is incredible to him.”

“To me too!  I can understand little differences, little whims, caprices:  we don’t settle into harness for a tap on the shoulder as a man becomes a knight:  but to break and bounce away from an unhappy gentleman at the church door is either madness or it’s one of the things without a name.  You think you are quite sure of yourself?”

“I am so sure, that I look back with regret on the time when I was not.”

“But you were in love with him.”

“I was mistaken.”

“No love?”

“I have none to give.”

“Dear me!—­Yes, yes, but that tone of sorrowful conviction is often a trick, it’s not new:  and I know that assumption of plain sense to pass off a monstrosity.”  Mrs. Mountstuart struck her lap.  “Soh! but I’ve had to rack my brain for it:  feminine disgust?  You have been hearing imputations of his past life? moral character?  No?  Circumstances might make him behave unkindly, not unhandsomely:  and we have no claim over a man’s past, or it’s too late to assert it.  What is the case?”

“We are quite divided.”

“Nothing in the way of . . . nothing green-eyed?”

“Far from that!”

“Then name it.”

“We disagree.”

“Many a very good agreement is founded on disagreeing.  It’s to be regretted that you are not portionless.  If you had been, you would have made very little of disagreeing.  You are just as much bound in honour as if you had the ring on your finger.”

“In honour!  But I appeal to his, I am no wife for him.”

“But if he insists, you consent?”

“I appeal to reason.  Is it, madam . . .”

“But, I say, if he insists, you consent?”

“He will insist upon his own misery as well as mine.”

Mrs. Mountstuart rocked herself “My poor Sir Willoughby!  What a fate!—­And I took you for a clever girl!  Why, I have been admiring your management of him!  And here am I bound to take a lesson from Lady Busshe.  My dear good Middleton, don’t let it be said that Lady Busshe saw deeper than I!  I put some little vanity in it, I own:  I won’t conceal it.  She declares that when she sent her present—­I don’t believe her—­she had a premonition that it would come back.  Surely you won’t justify the extravagances of a woman without common reverence:—­for anatomize him as we please to ourselves, he is a splendid man (and I did it chiefly to encourage and come at you).  We don’t often behold such a lordly-looking man:  so conversable too when he feels at home; a picture of an English gentleman!  The very man we want married for our