“But do you know what you ask for?  Do you remember what I told you of myself?  I am hard, materialistic; I have lost faith in romance, the skeleton is present with me all over life.  And my health is not good.  I crave for money.  I should marry to be rich.  I should not worship you.  I should be a burden, barely a living one, irresponsive and cold.  Conceive such a wife, Sir Willoughby!”

“It will be you!”

She tried to recall how this would have sung in her cars long back.  Her bosom rose and fell in absolute dejection.  Her ammunition of arguments against him had been expended overnight.

“You are so unforgiving,” she said.

“Is it I who am?”

“You do not know me.”

“But you are the woman of all the world who knows me, Laetitia.”

“Can you think it better for you to be known?”

He was about to say other words:  he checked them.  “I believe I do not know myself.  Anything you will, only give me your hand; give it; trust to me; you shall direct me.  If I have faults, help me to obliterate them.”

“Will you not expect me to regard them as the virtues of meaner men?”

“You will be my wife!”

Laetitia broke from him, crying:  “Your wife, your critic!  Oh, I cannot think it possible.  Send for the ladies.  Let them hear me.”

“They are at hand,” said Willoughby, opening the door.

They were in one of the upper rooms anxiously on the watch.

“Dear ladies,” Laetitia said to them, as they entered.  “I am going to wound you, and I grieve to do it:  but rather now than later, if I am to be your housemate.  He asks me for a hand that cannot carry a heart, because mine is dead.  I repeat it.  I used to think the heart a woman’s marriage portion for her husband.  I see now that she may consent, and he accept her, without one.  But it is right that you should know what I am when I consent.  I was once a foolish, romantic girl; now I am a sickly woman, all illusions vanished.  Privation has made me what an abounding fortune usually makes of others—­I am an Egoist.  I am not deceiving you.  That is my real character.  My girl’s view of him has entirely changed; and I am almost indifferent to the change.  I can endeavour to respect him, I cannot venerate.”

“Dear child!” the ladies gently remonstrated.

Willoughby motioned to them.

“If we are to live together, and I could very happily live with you,” Laetitia continued to address them, “you must not be ignorant of me.  And if you, as I imagine, worship him blindly, I do not know how we are to live together.  And never shall you quit this house to make way for me.  I have a hard detective eye.  I see many faults.”

“Have we not all of us faults, dear child?”

“Not such as he has; though the excuses of a gentleman nurtured in idolatry may be pleaded.  But he should know that they are seen, and seen by her he asks to be his wife, that no misunderstanding may exist, and while it is yet time he may consult his feelings.  He worships himself.”