warmth of the truest love and the hope of the happiest home in the world.  And yet she was not to be won entirely, or even chiefly, by personal pleadings for happiness, or by the feeling that her life and Elsie’s might go on smoothly and cheerfully with him.  She was to be convinced that it was right that she should marry him, and then the whole of her affectionate and ardent nature would abandon itself to the pleasure of loving and being beloved.  It was because she had no husband to occupy her heart that she dwelt so fondly on those abstractions of public duty and social progress, and he would convince her that out of an aggregate of happy homes a happy people is composed.  She had found opportunities both of gaining knowledge and of doing good in the most unfavourable circumstances, and she would have more chances as his wife, with his co-operation and sympathy.

She was not the sort of woman his poetical and artistic dreams had been wont to draw as the partner of his life; not the lovely, clinging, dependent girl who would look up to him for counsel and support, but something better, both in herself and for him, than his fancy had ever painted.  Her powers of sympathy had been increased by her knowledge; she was as just as she was generous.  There was no corner of his heart he could not lay bare to her; no passage of his past life that he could not trust to her judging fairly and charitably.  Whether he rose or fell in the world; whether he gained social influence or lost it in the career that he had again to begin, her foot would be planted firmly beside his; her insight and sympathy would heighten every enjoyment and fortify him for every trial.  That he felt her to be beautiful, perhaps, was more in his powers of seeing than in her positive charm of countenance; but so far as the soul looked through her eyes and breathed from her lips, she had a sort of beauty that did not weary any intelligent gazer, and at all events, which could never weary Francis Hogarth.  After all the flattery he had met with since his accession to fortune, and the conventionalisms of society in which he had been plunged, he felt the transparent sincerity of Jane’s character something to rest in with perfect confidence and perfect satisfaction.  The most brilliant Frenchwomen had not her earnestness or her power, though they had far more vivacity, and made their interlocutors more satisfied with themselves.  And Francis felt that he ought to be married; and how could he ever attach himself sufficiently to any other woman and not draw comparisons between her and the woman whom his interest—­his worldly interest alone—­forbade him to make his wife?  He must learn to love Jane less, or obtain from herself leave to love her more.