‘Can you affirm that you are not bitter at heart because rich and great people forget you?’

‘No more questions. You are mistaken if you think I am anxious to curry favour with rich and great people. I only want means—a position—a career.’

‘Which your own talent and goodness shall win you. You were made to be great—you shall be great.’

‘I wonder now, if you spoke honestly out of your heart, what receipt you would give me for acquiring this same greatness; but I know it—better than you know it yourself. Would it be efficacious? would it work? Yes—poverty, misery, bankruptcy. Oh! life is not what you think it, Lina!’

‘But you are what I think you.’

‘I am not.’

‘You are better, then?’

‘Far worse.’

‘No; far better. I know you are good.’

‘How do you know it?’

‘You look so; and I feel you are so.’

‘Where do you feel it?’

‘In my heart.’

‘Ah! you judge me with your heart, Lina; you should judge me with your head.’

‘I do; and then I am quite proud of you. Robert, you cannot tell all my thoughts about you.’

Mr. Moore’s dark face mustered colour; his lips smiled, and yet were compressed; his eyes laughed, and yet he resolutely knit his brow.

‘Think meanly of me, Lina,’ said he. ‘Men in general are a sort of scum, very different to anything of which you have an idea; I make no pretension to be better than my fellows.’

‘If you did I should not esteem you so much; it is because you are modest that I have such confidence in your merit.’

‘Are you flattering me?’ he demanded, turning sharply upon her, and searching her face with an eye of acute penetration.

‘No,’ she said softly, laughing at his sudden quickness. She seemed to think it unnecessary to proffer any eager disavowal of the charge.

‘You don’t care whether I think you flatter me or not?’

‘No.’

‘You are so secure of your own intentions?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘What are they, Caroline?’