you like Say,
'I am Wildmay--you are Pauline.' And see how amazed she will be, and how
incensed, and how indignant."

Then he would look up at the castle stonily, in a mood of desperate
renunciation, and vaguely meditate packing his belongings, and going
home to England.

At other moments a third answer would seem the plain one: something
between these extremes of optimism and pessimism, a compromise, it not a
reconciliation.

"Come! Let us be calm, let us be judicial. The consequences of our
actions, here below, if hardly ever so good as we could hope, are hardly
ever so bad as we might fear. Let us regard this matter in the light of
that guiding principle. True, she does n't dream that you are Wildmay.
True, if you were abruptly to say to her, 'I am Wildmay--you are the
woman,' she would be astonished--even, if you will, at first, more or
less taken aback, disconcerted. But indignant? Why? What is this gulf
that separates you from her? What are these conventional barriers of
which you make so much? She is a duchess, she is the daughter of a lord,
and she is rich. Well, all that is to be regretted. But you are neither
a plebeian nor a pauper yourself. You are a man of good birth, you are a
man of some parts, and you have a decent income. It amounts to this--she
is a great lady, you are a small gentleman. In ordinary circumstances,
to be sure, so small a gentleman could not ask so great a lady to become
his wife. But here the circumstances are not ordinary. Destiny has
meddled in the business. Small gentleman though you are, an unusual and
subtle relation-ship has been established between you and your great
lady. She herself says, 'Ordinary rules cannot apply--he ought to tell
her.' Very good: tell her. She will be astonished, but she will see that
there is no occasion for resentment. And though the odds are, of course,
a hundred to one that she will not accept you, still she must treat you
as an honourable suitor. And whether she accepts you or rejects you,
it is better to tell her and to have it over, than to go on forever
dangling this way, like the poor cat in the adage. Tell her--put your
fate to the touch--hope nothing, fear nothing--and bow to the event."

But even this temperate answer provoked its counter-answer.

"The odds are a hundred to one, a thousand to one, that she will not
accept you. And if you tell her, and she does not accept you, she will
not allow you to see her any more, you will be exiled