most painful
throbbing, constitute love,--then assuredly I love Sidwell. But if to
love is to be possessed with madness, to lose all taste of life when
hope refuses itself, to meditate frantic follies, to deem it
inconceivable that this woman should ever lose her dominion over me, or
another reign in her stead,--then my passion falls short of the true
testrum, and I am only dallying with fancies which might spring up as
often as I encountered a charming girl.

All things considered, to encourage this amorous preoccupation was
probably the height of unwisdom. The lover is ready at deluding
himself, but Peak never lost sight of the extreme unlikelihood that he
should ever become Martin Warricombe's son-in-law, of the thousand
respects which forbade his hoping that Sidwell would ever lay her hand
in his. That deep-rooted sense of class which had so much influence on
his speculative and practical life asserted itself, with rigid
consistency, even against his own aspirations; he attributed to the
Warricombes more prejudice on this subject than really existed in them.
He, it was true, belonged to no class whatever, acknowledged no
subordination save that of the hierarchy of intelligence; but this
could not obscure the fact that his brother sold seeds across a
counter, that his sister had married a haberdasher, that his uncle
(notoriously) was somewhere or other supplying the public with cheap
repasts. Girls of Sidwell's delicacy do not misally themselves, for
they take into account the fact that such misalliance is fraught with
elements of unhappiness, affecting husband as much as wife. No need to
dwell upon the scruples suggested by his moral attitude; he would never
be called upon to combat them with reference to Sidwell's future.

What, then, was he about? For what advantage was he playing the
hypocrite? Would he, after all, be satisfied with some such wife as the
average curate may hope to marry?

A hundred times he reviewed the broad question, by the light of his six
months' experience. Was Sidwell Warricombe his ideal woman, absolutely
speaking? Why, no; not with all his glow of feeling could he persuade
himself to declare her that. Satisfied up to a certain point, admitted
to the sphere of wealthy refinement, he now had leisure to think of yet
higher grades, of the women who are not only exquisite creatures by
social comparison but rank by divine right among the foremost of their
race. Sidwell was far from intolera