"A fine high-spirited girl. These Pallisers have more courage about them than one expects from their outward manner. Silverbridge has plenty of it."
"I remember telling you he could be obstinate."
"And I remember that I did not believe you. Now I know it. He has the sort of pluck which enables a man to break a girl's heart,—or to destroy a girl's hopes,—without wincing. He can tell a girl to her face that she can go to the—mischief for him. There are so many men who can't do that, from cowardice, though their hearts be ever so well inclined. 'I have changed my mind.' There is something great in the courage of a man who can say that to a woman in so many words. Most of them, when they escape, escape by lies and subterfuges. Or they run away and won't allow themselves to be heard of. They trust to a chapter of accidents, and leave things to arrange themselves. But when a man can look a girl in the face with those seemingly soft eyes, and say with that seemingly soft mouth,—'I have changed my mind,'—though she would look him dead in return if she could, still she must admire him."
"Are you speaking of Silverbridge now?"
"Of course I am speaking of Silverbridge. I suppose I ought to hide it all and not to tell you. But as you are the only person I do tell, you must put up with me. Yes;—when I taxed him with his falsehood,—for he had been false,—he answered me with those very words! 'I have changed my mind.' He could not lie. To speak the truth was a necessity to him, even at the expense of his gallantry, almost of his humanity."
"Has he been false to you, Mabel?"
"Of course he has. But there is nothing to quarrel about, if you mean that. People do not quarrel now about such things. A girl has to fight her own battle with her own pluck and her own wits. As with these weapons she is generally stronger than her enemy, she succeeds sometimes although everything else is against her. I think I am courageous, but his courage beat mine. I craned at the first fence. When he was willing to swallow my bait, my hand was not firm enough to strike the hook in his jaws. Had I not quailed then I think I should have—'had him'."
"It is horrid to hear you talk like this." She was leaning over from her seat, looking, black as she was, so much older than her wont, with something about her of that unworldly serious thoughtfulness which a mourning garb always gives. And yet her words were so worldly, so unfeminine!
"I have got to tell the truth to somebody. It was so, just as I have said. Of course I did not love him. How could I love him after what has passed? But there need have been nothing much in that. I don't suppose that Dukes' eldest sons often get married for love."
"Miss Boncassen loves him."