"I dare say the beggar's daughter loved King Cophetua. When you come to distances such as that, there can be love. The very fact that a man should have descended so far in quest of beauty,—the flattery of it alone,—will produce love. When the angels came after the daughters of men of course the daughters of men loved them. The distance between him and me is not great enough to have produced that sort of worship. There was no reason why Lady Mabel Grex should not be good enough wife for the son of the Duke of Omnium."
"Certainly not."
"And therefore I was not struck, as by the shining of a light from heaven. I cannot say I loved him. Frank,—I am beyond worshipping even an angel from heaven!"
"Then I do not know that you could blame him," he said very seriously.
"Just so;—and as I have chosen to be honest I have told him everything. But I had my revenge first."
"I would have said nothing."
"You would have recommended—delicacy! No doubt you think that women should be delicate, let them suffer what they may. A woman should not let it be known that she has any human nature in her. I had him on the hip, and for a moment I used my power. He had certainly done me a wrong. He had asked for my love,—and with the delicacy which you commend, I had not at once grasped at all that such a request conveyed. Then, as he told me so frankly, 'he changed his mind!' Did he not wrong me?"
"He should not have raised false hopes."
"He told me that—he had changed his mind. I think I loved him then as nearly as ever I did,—because he looked me full in the face. Then,—I told him I had never cared for him, and that he need have nothing on his conscience. But I doubt whether he was glad to hear it. Men are so vain! I have talked too much of myself. And so you are to be the Duke's son-in-law. And she will have hundreds of thousands."
"Thousands perhaps, but I do not think very much about it. I feel that he will provide for her."