might
make him behave unkindly, not unhandsomely: and we have no claim over a
man's past, or it's too late to assert it. What is the case?"

"We are quite divided."

"Nothing in the way of . . . nothing green-eyed?"

"Far from that!"

"Then name it."

"We disagree."

"Many a very good agreement is founded on disagreeing. It's to be
regretted that you are not portionless. If you had been, you would have
made very little of disagreeing. You are just as much bound in honour
as if you had the ring on your finger."

"In honour! But I appeal to his, I am no wife for him."

"But if he insists, you consent?"

"I appeal to reason. Is it, madam . . ."

"But, I say, if he insists, you consent?"

"He will insist upon his own misery as well as mine."

Mrs. Mountstuart rocked herself "My poor Sir Willoughby! What a
fate!--And I took you for a clever girl! Why, I have been admiring
your management of him! And here am I bound to take a lesson from Lady
Busshe. My dear good Middleton, don't let it be said that Lady Busshe
saw deeper than I! I put some little vanity in it, I own: I won't
conceal it. She declares that when she sent her present--I don't
believe her--she had a premonition that it would come back. Surely you
won't justify the extravagances of a woman without common
reverence:--for anatomize him as we please to ourselves, he is a
splendid man (and I did it chiefly to encourage and come at you). We
don't often behold such a lordly-looking man: so conversable too when
he feels at home; a picture of an English gentleman! The very man we
want married for our neighbourhood! A woman who can openly talk of
expecting him to be twice jilted! You shrink. It is repulsive. It would
be incomprehensible: except, of course, to Lady Busshe, who rushed to
one of her violent conclusions, and became a prophetess. Conceive a
woman's imagining it could happen twice to the same man! I am not sure
she did not send the identical present that arrived and returned once
before: you know, the Durham engagement. She told me last night she
had it back. I watched her listening very suspiciously to Professor
Crooklyn. My dear, it is her passion to foretell disasters--her
passion! And when they are confirmed, she triumphs, of course. We shall
have her domineering over us with sapient nods at every trifle
occurring. The county will be unendurable. Unsay it, my Middleton! And
don't answer like an oracle because I do all the talking. Pour out t