‘ “I am poor: I must be proud.”

‘ “I have received ordinances and own obligations stringent as yours.”

‘We had reached a critical point now, and we halted and looked at each other. She would not give in, I felt. Beyond this I neither felt nor saw. A few moments yet were mine. The end was coming—I heard its rush—but not come; I would dally, wait, talk, and, when impulse urged, I would act. I am never in a hurry—I never was in a hurry in my whole life. Hasty people drink the nectar of existence scalding hot. I taste it cool as dew. I proceeded:

‘ “Apparently, Miss Keeldar, you are as little likely to marry as myself. I know you have refused three— nay, four—advantageous offers, and, I believe, a fifth. Have you rejected Sir Philip Nunnely?”

‘I put this question suddenly and promptly.

‘ “Did you think I should take him?”

‘ “I thought you might.”

‘ “On what grounds, may I ask?”

‘ “Conformity of rank; age; pleasing contrast of temper, for he is mild and amiable; harmony of intellectual tastes.”

‘ “A beautiful sentence! Let us take it to pieces. ‘Conformity of rank.’ He is quite above me. Compare my grange with his palace, if you please. I am disdained by his kith and kin. ‘Suitability of age.’ We were born in the same year; consequently, he still a boy, while I am a woman, ten years his senior to all intents and purposes. ‘Contrast of temper.’ ‘Mild and amiable’ is he. I—what? Tell me.”

‘ “Sister of the spotted, bright, quick, fiery leopard.”

‘ “And you would mate me with a kid?—the Millennium being yet millions of centuries from mankind; being yet, indeed, an archangel high in the seventh heaven, uncommissioned to descend. Unjust barbarian! ‘Harmony of intellectual tastes.’ He is fond of poetry, and I hate it.”

‘ “Do you? That is news.”

‘ “I absolutely shudder at the sight of metre or at the sound of rhyme whenever I am at the Priory or Sir Philip at Fieldhead. Harmony, indeed! When did I whip up syllabub sonnets, or string stanzas fragile as fragments of glass? And when did I betray a belief that those penny beads were genuine brilliants?”

‘ “You might have the satisfaction of leading him to a higher standard—of improving his tastes.”

‘ “Leading and improving! teaching and tutoring! bearing and forbearing! Pah! My husband is not to be my baby. I am not to set him his daily lesson and see that he learns it, and give him a sugar-plum if he is good, and a patient, pensive, pathetic lecture if he is bad. But it is like a tutor to talk of the ‘satisfaction of teaching.’ I suppose you think it the finest employment in the world. I don’t—I reject it. Improving a husband! No. I shall insist upon my husband improving me, or else we part.”

‘ “God knows it is needed!”

‘ “What do you mean by that, Mr. Moore?”

‘ “What I say. Improvement is imperatively needed.”