"I think you would."
"He'll never get another half so good; and he'll be sure to get one before long. It is a sort of tenderness that is quite inefficacious. He will become a prey, as I should have made him a prey. But where is there another who will treat him so well?"
"I cannot bear to hear you speak of yourself in that way."
"But it is true. I know the sort of girl he should marry. In the first place she should be two years younger, and four years fresher. She should be able not only to like him and love him, but to worship him. How well I can see her! She should have fair hair, and bright green-gray eyes, with the sweetest complexion, and the prettiest little dimples;—two inches shorter than me, and the delight of her life should be to hang with two hands on his arm. She should have a feeling that her Silverbridge is an Apollo upon earth. To me he is a rather foolish, but very, very sweet-tempered young man;—anything rather than a god. If I thought that he would get the fresh young girl with the dimples then I ought to abstain."
"If he was in earnest," said Miss Cassewary, throwing aside all this badinage and thinking of the main point, "if he was in earnest he will come again."
"He was quite in earnest."
"Then he will come again."
"I don't think he will," said Lady Mabel. "I told him that I was too old for him, and I tried to laugh him out of it. He does not like being laughed at. He has been saved, and he will know it."
"But if he should come again?"
"I shall not spare him again. No;—not twice. I felt it to be hard to do so once, because I so nearly love him! There are so many of them who are odious to me, as to whom the idea of marrying them seems to be mixed somehow with an idea of suicide."