when a man has made up his mind
in such an affair as this, he shouldn't give way to any young diamond
dealer of them all."

"Not to him."

"And what's she? Are you to give up everything because she's
love-sick for a day or two? Is everything to be knocked to pieces
here at Croker's Hall, because he has come and made eyes at her? She
was glad enough to take what you offered before he had come this
way."

"She was not glad enough. That is it. She was not glad enough."

"She took you, at any rate, and I'd never make myself mean enough to
make way for such a fellow as that."

"It isn't for him, Mrs Baggett."

"It is for him. Who else? To walk away and just leave the game open
because he has come down to Hampshire! There ain't no spirit of
standing up and fighting about it."

"With whom am I to fight?"

"With both of 'em;--till you have your own way. A foolish, stupid,
weak girl like that!"

"I won't have her abused."

"She's very well. I ain't a-saying nothing against her. If she'll do
what you bid her, she'll turn out right enough. You asked her, and
she said she'd do it. Is not that so? There's nothing I hate so much
as them romantic ways. And everything is to be made to give way
because a young chap is six foot high! I hates romance and manly
beauty, as they call it, and all the rest of it. Where is she to get
her bread and meat? That's what I want to know."

"There'll be bread and meat for her."

"I dare say. But you'll have to pay for it, while she's philandering
about with him! And that's what you call fine feelings. I call it
all rubbish. If you've a mind to make her Mrs Whittlestaff, make her
Mrs Whittlestaff. Drat them fine feelings. I never knew no good come
of what people call fine feelings. If a young woman does her work
as it should be, she's got no time to think of 'em. And if a man is
master, he should be master. How's a man to give way to a girl like
that, and then stand up and face the world around him? A man has to
be master; and when he's come to be a little old-like, he has to see
that he will be master. I never knew no good come of one of them
soft-going fellows who is minded to give up whenever a woman wants
anything. What's a woman? It ain't natural that she should have her
way; and she don't like a man a bit better in the long-run because
he lets her. There's Miss Mary; if you're stiff with her now, she'll
come out right enough in a month or two. She's lived without Mr
Gordon well