"Of course you do. Men have become so soft themselves, that they no longer dare to think even of punishing those who behave badly, and they expect women to be softer and more fainéant than themselves. I have been ill-used."
"Certainly you have."
"And I will be revenged. Look here, Frank; if your view of these things is altogether different from mine, let us drop the subject. Of all living human beings you are the one that is most to me now. Perhaps you are more than any other ever was. But, even for you, I cannot alter my nature. Even for you I would not alter it if I could. That man has injured me, and all the world knows it. I will have my revenge, and all the world shall know that. I did wrong;—I am sensible enough of that."
"What wrong do you mean?"
"I told a man whom I never loved that I would marry him. God knows that I have been punished."
"Perhaps, Lizzie, it is better as it is."
"A great deal better. I will tell you now that I could never induce myself to go into church with that man as his bride. With a man I didn't love I might have done so, but not with a man I despised."
"You have been saved, then, from a greater evil."
"Yes;—but not the less is his injury to me. It is not because he despises me that he rejects me;—nor is it because he thought that I had taken property that was not my own."
"Why then?"