"I do not think it was all for that."
"How shall I answer that without a confession which even I am not hardened enough to make? In truth, Silverbridge, I have never loved you."
He drew himself up slowly before he answered her, and gradually assumed a look very different from that easy boyish smile which was customary to him. "I am glad of that," he said.
"Why are you glad?"
"Now I can have no regrets."
"You need have none. It was necessary to me that I should have my little triumph;—that I should show you that I knew how far you had wronged me! But now I wish that you should know everything. I have never loved you."
"There is an end of it then."
"But I have liked you so well,—so much better than all others! A dozen men have asked me to marry them. And though they might be nothing till they made that request, then they became—things of horror to me. But you were not a thing of horror. I could have become your wife, and I think that I could have learned to love you."
"It is best as it is."
"I ought to say so too; but I have a doubt I should have liked to be Duchess of Omnium, and perhaps I might have fitted the place better than one who can as yet know but little of its duties or its privileges. I may, perhaps, think that that other arrangement would have been better even for you."