mily wish it:
but the face of Jessie rose up before me, and I said to myself, 'I
should be a base man if I married one woman, while I could not get
another woman out of my head.' I must see Jessie once more, must learn
whether her face is now really the face that haunts me when I sit alone;
and I have seen her, and it is not that face: it may be handsomer, but
it is not a girl's face, it is the face of a wife and a mother. And,
last evening, while she was talking with an open-heartedness which I
had never found in her before, I became strangely conscious of the
difference in myself that had been silently at work within the last two
years or so. Then, sir, when I was but an ill-conditioned, uneducated,
petty village farrier, there was no inequality between me and a peasant
girl; or, rather, in all things except fortune, the peasant girl
was much above me. But last evening I asked myself, watching her and
listening to her talk, 'If Jessie were now free, should I press her to
be my wife?' and I answered myself, 'No.'"

Kenelm listened with rapt attention, and exclaimed briefly, but
passionately, "Why?"

"It seems as if I were giving myself airs to say why. But, sir, lately I
have been thrown among persons, women as well as men, of a higher class
than I was born in; and in a wife I should want a companion up to their
mark, and who would keep me up to mine; and ah, sir, I don't feel as if
I could find that companion in Mrs. Somers."

"I understand you now, Tom. But you are spoiling a silly romance of
mine. I had fancied the little girl with the flower face would grow up
to supply the loss of Jessie; and, I am so ignorant of the human heart,
I did think it would take all the years required for the little girl to
open into a woman, before the loss of the old love could be supplied. I
see now that the poor little child with the flower face has no chance."

"Chance? Why, Mr. Chillingly," cried Tom, evidently much nettled, "Susey
is a dear little thing, but she is scarcely more than a mere charity
girl. Sir, when I last saw you in London you touched on that matter as
if I were still the village farrier's son, who might marry a village
labourer's daughter. But," added Tom, softening down his irritated tone
of voice, "even if Susey were a lady born I think a man would make a
very great mistake, if he thought he could bring up a little girl to
regard him as a father; and then, when she grew up, expect her to accept
him as a love