“I didn’t know anything of his mother and sisters.”
“No, of course you didn’t. But you know a great deal about his hat and gloves. You are too hard, and polished, and well-mannered in England to know anything about anybody’s mother or sisters, or indeed to know anything about anybody’s anything. It is nothing to you whether a man be moral, or affectionate, or industrious, or good-tempered. As long as he can wear his hat properly, and speak as though nothing on the earth, or over the earth, or under the earth, could ever move him, that is sufficient.”
“And yet I thought you were so fond of England?”
“So I am. I too like,—nay, love that ease of manner which you all possess and which I cannot reach.”
Then there was silence between us for perhaps half a mile, and yet I was driving slow, as I did not wish to bring our journey to an end. I had fully made up my mind that it would be in every way better for my friend Pryor that he should give up all thoughts of this Western Aspasia, and yet I was anxious to talk to her about him as though such a marriage were still on the cards. It had seemed that lately she had thrown herself much into an intimacy with myself, and that she was anxious to speak openly to me if I would only allow it. But she had already declared, on a former occasion, that she would ask me no further question about Mr. Pryor. At last I plucked up courage, and put to her a direct proposition about the future tenor of her life. “After all that you have said about Mr. Hoskins, I suppose I may expect to hear that you have at last accepted him?” I could not have asked such a question of any English girl that I ever knew,—not even of my own sister in these plain terms. And yet she took it not only without anger, but even without surprise. And she answered it, as though I had asked her the most ordinary question in the world.
“I wish I had,” she said. “That is, I think I wish I had. It is certainly what I ought to do.”
“Then why do you not do it?”
“Ah! why do I not? Why do we not all do just what we ought to do? But why am I to be cross-questioned by you? You would not answer me a question when I asked you the other day.”
“You tell me that you wish you had accepted Mr. Hoskins. Why do you not do so?” said I, continuing my cross-examination.
“Because I have a vain ambition,—a foolish ambition,—a silly, moth-like ambition,—by which, if I indulge it, I shall only burn my wings. Because I am such an utter ass that I would fain make myself an Englishwoman.”