‘Would, you lave rejected him when you were a girl?’

‘I think so.’

‘The superior merits of another . . .?’

’Oh, no, no, no, no!  I might have accepted him:  and I might not have made him happy.  I wanted a hero, and the jewelled garb and the feather did not suit him.’

’No; he is not that description of lay-figure.  You have dressed it, and gemmed it, and—­made your discovery.  Here is a true man; and if you can find me any of your heroes to match him, I will thank you.  He came on the day I speak of, to consult me as to whether, with the income he then had . . .  Well, I had to tell him you were engaged.  The man has never wavered in his love of you since that day.  He has had to bear something.’

This was an electrical bolt into Tony’s bosom, shaking her from self-pity and shame to remorseful pity of the suffering lover; and the tears ran in streams, as she said: 

‘He bore it, Emmy, he bore it.’  She sobbed out:  ’And he went on building a fortune and batting!  Whatever he undertakes he does perfectly-approve of the pattern or not.  Oh!  I have no doubt he had his nest of wish piping to him all the while:  only it seems quaint, dear, quaint, and against everything we’ve been reading of lovers!  Love was his bread and butter!’ Her dark eyes showered.  ’And to tell you what you do not know of him, his way of making love is really,’ she sobbed, ’pretty.  It . . . it took me by surprise; I was expecting a bellow and an assault of horns; and if, dear:—­you will say, what boarding-school girl have you got with you! and I feel myself getting childish:—­if Sol in his glory had not been so m . . . majestically m . . . magnificent, nor seemed to show me the king . . . kingdom of my dreams, I might have stammered the opposite word to the one he heard.  Last night, when he took my hand kindly before going to bed I had a fit for dropping on my knees to him.  I saw him bleed, and he held himself right royally.  I told you he did; —­Sol in his moral grandeur!  How infinitely above the physical monarch—­ is he not, Emmy?  What one dislikes, is the devotion of all that grandeur to win a widow.  It should be a maiden princess.  You feel it so, I am sure.  And here am I, as if a maiden princess were I, demanding romantic accessories of rubious vapour in the man condescending to implore the widow to wed him.  But, tell me, does he know everything of his widow—­ everything?  I shall not have to go through the frightful chapter?’

’He is a man with his eyes awake; he knows as much as any husband could require to know,’ said Emma; adding:  ’My darling! he trusts you.  It is the soul of the man that loves you, as it is mine.  You will not tease him?  Promise me.  Give yourself frankly.  You see it clearly before you.’

’I see compulsion, my dear.  What I see, is a regiment of Proverbs, bearing placards instead of guns, and each one a taunt at women, especially at widows.  They march; they form square; they enclose me in the middle, and I have their inscriptions to digest.  Read that crazy letter from Mary Paynham while I am putting on my bonnet.  I perceive I have been crying like a raw creature in her teens.  I don’t know myself.  An advantage of the darker complexions is our speedier concealment of the traces.’