"Because, mamma, there is nothing we can talk about without making each other unhappy."
"What a dreadful thing to say! Is there no subject in the world to interest you except that wretched young man?"
"None other at all," said Hetta obstinately.
"What folly it is,—I will not say only to speak like that, but to allow yourself to entertain such thoughts!"
"How am I to control my thoughts? Do you think, mamma, that after I had owned to you that I loved a man,—after I had owned it to him and, worst of all, to myself,—I could have myself separated from him, and then not think about it? It is a cloud upon everything. It is as though I had lost my eyesight and my speech. It is as it would be to you if Felix were to die. It crushes me."
There was an accusation in this allusion to her brother which the mother felt,—as she was intended to feel it,—but to which she could make no reply. It accused her of being too much concerned for her son to feel any real affection for her daughter. "You are ignorant of the world, Hetta," she said.
"I am having a lesson in it now, at any rate."
"Do you think it is worse than others have suffered before you? In what little you see around you do you think that girls are generally able to marry the men upon whom they set their hearts?" She paused, but Hetta made no answer to this. "Marie Melmotte was as warmly attached to your brother as you can be to Mr. Montague."
"Marie Melmotte!"
"She thinks as much of her feelings as you do of yours. The truth is you are indulging a dream. You must wake from it, and shake yourself, and find out that you, like others, have got to do the best you can for yourself in order that you may live. The world at large has to eat dry bread, and cannot get cakes and sweetmeats. A girl, when she thinks of giving herself to a husband, has to remember this. If she has a fortune of her own she can pick and choose, but if she have none she must allow herself to be chosen."