you can wish."
Then he left her, saying nothing of his suit on that occasion.

Two months after this,--and during those two months he had
necessarily seen her frequently,--Mr Handcock wrote to her from his
office in Somerset House, renewing his old proposals of marriage. His
letter was short and sensible, pleading his cause as well, perhaps,
as any words were capable of pleading it at this time; but it was not
successful. As to her money he told her that no doubt he regarded it
now as a great addition to their chance of happiness, should they
put their lots together; and as to his love for her, he referred her
to the days in which he had desired to make her his wife without a
shilling of fortune. He had never changed, he said; and if her heart
was as constant as his, he would make good now the proposal which she
had once been willing to accept. His income was not equal to hers,
but it was not inconsiderable, and therefore as regards means they
would be very comfortable. Such were his arguments, and Margaret,
little as she knew of the world, was able to perceive that he
expected that they would succeed with her.

Little, however, as she might know of the world, she was not prepared
to sacrifice herself and her new freedom, and her new power and her
new wealth, to Mr Harry Handcock. One word said to her when first
she was free and before she was rich, would have carried her. But an
argumentative, well-worded letter, written to her two months after
the fact of her freedom and the fact of her wealth had sunk into
his mind, was powerless on her. She had looked at her glass and
had perceived that years had improved her, whereas years had not
improved Harry Handcock. She had gone back over her old aspirations,
aspirations of which no whisper had ever been uttered, but which had
not the less been strong within her, and had told herself that she
could not gratify them by a union with Mr Handcock. She thought, or
rather hoped, that society might still open to her its portals,--not
simply the society of the Handcocks from Somerset House, but that
society of which she had read in novels during the day, and of which
she had dreamed at night. Might it not yet be given to her to know
clever people, nice people, bright people, people who were not heavy
and fat like Mr Handcock, or sick and wearisome like her poor brother
Walter, or vulgar and quarrelsome like her relatives in Gower Street?
She reminded herself that she was the niece