"I do think it; that is to say, I think it very probable. I cannot explain to you, Adela, all the turns of my mind, or of my heart. I would not for worlds of gold marry a man I did not love."
"And do not you love Mr. Bertram?"
"Yes, I do; at times very, very much; but I fear the time may come when I may love him less. You will not understand me; but the fact is, I should love him better if he were less worthy of my love—if he were more worldly."
"No, I do not understand that," said Adela, thinking of her love, and the worldly prudence of him who should have been her lover.
"That is it—you do not understand me; and yet it is not selfishness on my part. I would marry a man in the hope of making him happy."
"Certainly," said Adela; "no girl should marry unless she have reasonable hope that she can do that."
"He would wish me to go to him now, at once; when we have no sufficient income to support us."
"Four hundred a year!" said Adela, reproachfully.
"What would four hundred a year do in London? Were I to consent, in a year or two he would be sick of me. He would be a wretched man, unless, indeed, his law-courts and his club kept him from being wretched;—his home would not do so."
Adela silently compared the matter with her own affairs: her ideas were so absolutely different. "If he could have contented himself to live upon potatoes," she had once thought to herself, "I could have contented myself to live on the parings." She said nothing of this however to Caroline. Their dispositions she knew were different. After all, it may be that Miss Waddington had a truer knowledge of human nature.