"Not only for that. I have promised and therefore I am bound. She has—well, she has said that she loves me, and therefore of course I am bound. But it is not only that."
"What do you mean?"
"I suppose a man ought to marry the woman he loves,—if he can get her."
"No; no; not so; not always so. Do you think that love is a passion that cannot be withstood?"
"But here we are both of one mind, sir. When I saw how you seemed to take to her—"
"Take to her! Can I not interest myself in human beings without wishing to make them flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone? What am I to think of you? It was but the other day that all that you are now telling me of Miss Boncassen, you were telling me of Lady Mabel Grex." Here poor Silverbridge bit his lips and shook his head, and looked down upon the ground. This was the weak part of his case. He could not tell his father the whole story about Mabel,—that she had coyed his love, so that he had been justified in thinking himself free from any claim in that direction when he had encountered the infinitely sweeter charms of Isabel Boncassen. "You are weak as water," said the unhappy father.
"I am not weak in this."
"Did you not say exactly the same about Lady Mabel?"
There was a pause, so that he was driven to reply. "I found her as I thought indifferent, and then—I changed my mind."
"Indifferent! What does she think about it now? Does she know of this? How does it stand between you two at the present moment?"