ad made to Patience as to the persistency of her own affection.
First dismay and then wrath had come upon her when the man who ought
to be her lover came to the very house in which she was living, and
there offered his hand to another girl, almost in her very presence.
Had the sin been committed elsewhere, and with any rival other than
her own cousin, she might have still clung to that doctrine of
forgiveness, because the sinner was a man, and because it is the way
of the world to forgive men. But the insult had been too close for
pardon; and now her wrath was slowly changing itself to contempt. Had
Mary accepted the man's offer this phase of feeling would not have
occurred. Clarissa would have hated the woman, but still might have
loved the man. But Mary had treated him as a creature absolutely
beneath her notice, had evidently despised him, and Mary's scorn
communicated itself to Clarissa. The fact that Ralph was now Newton
of Newton, absolutely in harbour after so many dangers of shipwreck,
assisted her in this. "I would have been true to him, though
he hadn't had a penny," she said to herself: "I would never
have given him up though all the world had been against him."
Debts, difficulties, an inheritance squandered, idle habits, even
profligacy, should not have torn him from her heart, had he possessed
the one virtue of meaning what he said when he told her that he loved
her. She remembered the noble triumph she had felt when she declared
to Mary that that other Ralph, who was to have been Mary's lover,
was welcome to the fine property. Her sole ambition had been to be
loved by this man; but the man had been incapable of loving her.
She herself was pretty, and soft, bright on occasions, and graceful.
She knew so much of herself; and she knew, also, that Mary was far
prettier than herself, and more clever. This young man to whom she
had devoted herself possessed no power of love for an individual,--no
capability of so joining himself to another human being as to feel,
that in spite of any superiority visible to the outside world, that
one should be esteemed by him superior to all others,--because of
his love. The young man had liked prettiness and softness and grace
and feminine nicenesses; and seeing one who was prettier and more
graceful,--all which poor Clary allowed, though she was not so sure
about the softness and niceness,--had changed his aim without an
effort! Ah, how different was poor Gregory!

She though