The state of her own heart she did not like to look into very closely; she knew that Francis was inexpressibly dear to her, but the absolute absence of all jealousy made her doubt if it were really what is called love.  She could look forward without pain to another person becoming more to him than herself.  My readers will think that if it had been really love, it would have forced itself upon her, and burst through all the barriers that were laid across its course.  But love in a strong nature is a very different thing from the same amount of love in a feeble nature.  If it had been her own property and career that had to be given up for his sake, her love would have probably conquered all private ambition; but the very high estimation in which she held her cousin, fought against her instinctive wish to make him happy.  And if the irrevocable step were taken, what security would she have that he might not regret it?

She dwelt in her own mind on the disparities between them, which, but for the peculiar circumstances in which they had been placed by her uncle’s will, must have prevented the formation even of the friendship, now so close and so precious.  She was perhaps scarcely aware that such contrasts are more favourable to the growth and the continuance of love than too near resemblance in character and temperament.  She was so different in many ways from him—­he was literary—­she was practical; he was poetical and artistic, and by no means scientific—­she was destitute of taste, and saw more romance in the wonders of science than in much of the poetry he admired so much; he was aristocratic by temperament, and only forced by her influence at the turning-point of his life into her democratic views—­she could not rest from the over-activity of her nature, while he liked repose, meditative, literary, and dilettanti.  The strong sense of duty, which certainly was the guiding principle of his nature, led him to exertion; while Jane worked because she could not help it.  With Jane’s temperament Francis never would have stayed for fifteen years clerk in the Bank of Scotland, while there were new countries to conquer, or new fields to work in.  He found pleasure in beautiful things; all disorder or disorganization was positively painful to him.  To begin again a life of comparative poverty, burdened with the care of Elsie, would be far more trying to him than to her; for though she had been brought up in greater affluence, she cared less for the elegances of life.  She loved him far too well to allow him to sacrifice a great deal more than she thought she was worth for such a doubtful good, and she entered heart and soul into the prospects of this election, as the thing which would decide Francis’ fate, and would give him still nobler work to do, to keep him from regretting what it was better he should not obtain.