She moved as if about to look at him, but checked herself, closed her lips, and fixed her eyes on the vacant seat before her.  The reproach he deserved was beyond her power of expression.

“I cling to that conviction still, in spite of Miss Lindsay’s indifference to my affairs.  But I confess I hardly know how to bring you into sympathy with me in this matter.  In the first place, you have never been married, I have.  In the next, you are much younger than I, in more respects than that of years.  Very likely half your ideas on the subject are derived from fictions in which happy results are tacked on to conditions very ill-calculated to produce them—­which in real life hardly ever do produce them.  If our friendship were a chapter in a novel, what would be the upshot of it?  Why, I should marry you, or you break your heart at my treachery.”

Gertrude moved her eyes as if she had some intention of taking to flight.

“But our relations being those of real life—­far sweeter, after all—­I never dreamed of marrying you, having gained and enjoyed your friendship without that eye to business which our nineteenth century keeps open even whilst it sleeps.  You, being equally disinterested in your regard for me, do not think of breaking your heart, but you are, I suppose, a little hurt at my apparently meditating and resolving on such a serious step as marriage with Agatha without confiding my intention to you.  And you punish me by telling me that you have nothing to do with it—­that it is nothing to you.  But I never meditated the step, and so had nothing to conceal from you.  It was conceived and executed in less than a minute.  Although my first marriage was a silly love match and a failure, I have always admitted to myself that I should marry again.  A bachelor is a man who shirks responsibilities and duties; I seek them, and consider it my duty, with my monstrous superfluity of means, not to let the individualists outbreed me.  Still, I was in no hurry, having other things to occupy me, and being fond of my bachelor freedom, and doubtful sometimes whether I had any right to bring more idlers into the world for the workers to feed.  Then came the usual difficulty about the lady.  I did not want a helpmeet; I can help myself.  Nor did I expect to be loved devotedly, for the race has not yet evolved a man lovable on thorough acquaintance; even my self-love is neither thorough nor constant.  I wanted a genial partner for domestic business, and Agatha struck me quite suddenly as being the nearest approach to what I desired that I was likely to find in the marriage market, where it is extremely hard to suit oneself, and where the likeliest bargains are apt to be snapped up by others if one hesitates too long in the hope of finding something better.  I admire Agatha’s courage and capability, and believe I shall be able to make her like me, and that the attachment so begun may turn into as close a union as is either healthy or necessary between two separate individuals.  I may mistake her character, for I do not know her as I know you, and have scarcely enough faith in her as yet to tell her such things as I have told you.  Still, there is a consoling dash of romance in the transaction.  Agatha has charm.  Do you not think so?”