“I don’t see that you need burn your wings!”
“Yes; should I go there I shall find myself to be nobody, whereas here I am in good repute. Here I could make my husband a man of mark by dint of my own power. There I doubt whether even his esteem would so shield and cover me as to make me endurable. Do you think that I do not know the difference; that I am not aware of what makes social excellence there? And yet, though I know it all, and covet it, I despise it. Social distinction with us is given on sounder terms than it is with you, and is more frequently the deserved reward of merit. Tell me; if I go to London they will ask who was my grandfather?”
“Indeed, no; they will not ask even of your father unless you speak of him.”
“No; their manners are too good. But they will speak of their fathers, and how shall I talk with them? Not but what my grandfather was a good man; and you are not to suppose that I am ashamed of him because he stood in a store and sold leather with his own hands. Or rather, I am ashamed of it. I should tell my husband’s old friends and my new acquaintances that it was so because I am not a coward; and yet, as I told them, I should be ashamed. His brother is what you call a baronet.”
“Just so!”
“And what would the baronet’s wife say to me with all my sharp Boston notions? Can’t you see her looking at me over the length of the drawing-room? And can’t you fancy how pert I should be, and what snappish words I should say to the she baronet? Upon the whole, don’t you think I should do better with Mr. Hoskins?”
Again I sat silent for some time. She had now asked me a question to which I was bound to give her a true answer,—an answer that should be true as to herself without reference to Pryor. She was sitting back in the sleigh, tamed as it were by her own thoughts, and she had looked at me as though she had really wanted counsel. “If I am to answer you in truth——” I said.
“You are to answer me in truth.”
“Then,” said I, “I can only bid you take him of the two whom you love; that is, if it be the case that you love either.”
“Love!” she said.