“I dare say.”

“Artificial?”

“You would not have her natural?”

“I am heartily satisfied with her from head to foot, my dear Mrs. Mountstuart.”

“Nothing could be better.  And sometimes she will lead, and generally you will lead, and everything will go well, my dear Sir Willoughby.”

Like all rapid phrasers, Mrs. Mountstuart detested the analysis of her sentence.  It had an outline in vagueness, and was flung out to be apprehended, not dissected.  Her directions for the reading of Miss Middleton’s character were the same that she practised in reading Sir Willoughby’s, whose physiognomy and manners bespoke him what she presumed him to be, a splendidly proud gentleman, with good reason.

Mrs. Mountstuart’s advice was wiser than her procedure, for she stopped short where he declined to begin.  He dived below the surface without studying that index-page.  He had won Miss Middleton’s hand; he believed he had captured her heart; but he was not so certain of his possession of her soul, and he went after it.  Our enamoured gentleman had therefore no tally of Nature’s writing above to set beside his discoveries in the deeps.  Now it is a dangerous accompaniment of this habit of driving, that where we do not light on the discoveries we anticipate, we fall to work sowing and planting; which becomes a disturbance of the gentle bosom.  Miss Middleton’s features were legible as to the mainspring of her character.  He could have seen that she had a spirit with a natural love of liberty, and required the next thing to liberty, spaciousness, if she was to own allegiance.  Those features, unhappily, instead of serving for an introduction to the within, were treated as the mirror of himself.  They were indeed of an amiable sweetness to tempt an accepted lover to angle for the first person in the second.  But he had made the discovery that their minds differed on one or two points, and a difference of view in his bride was obnoxious to his repose.  He struck at it recurringly to show her error under various aspects.  He desired to shape her character to the feminine of his own, and betrayed the surprise of a slight disappointment at her advocacy of her ideas.  She said immediately:  “It is not too late, Willoughby,” and wounded him, for he wanted her simply to be material in his hands for him to mould her; he had no other thought.  He lectured her on the theme of the infinity of love.  How was it not too late?  They were plighted; they were one eternally; they could not be parted.  She listened gravely, conceiving the infinity as a narrow dwelling where a voice droned and ceased not.  However, she listened.  She became an attentive listener.

CHAPTER VI

HIS COURTSHIP