“I should not have dreamed of insulting you thus. The whole aim and ambition of my life was to win you for my wife—that I swear.”
“And yet you say you would not have dreamed of insulting me.”
“By professing what I did not feel, I meant!”
“Or promising what you could not perform?”
“I never did such a thing in my life, Lady Gwendolyn.”
“According to your own account you were on the brink of it a little while ago. What right have you to ask any woman to be your wife? And, supposing she accepted you, what, then?” inquired Lady Gwendolyn, with angry vehemence.
“Why, then, we should marry, I presume.”
“How could you?”
“I see no just cause or impediment, Lady Gwendolyn!”
“Then I am sorry for you, that is all. I can understand people’s doing wrong from the evil impulse of the moment; but it must be a very bad man indeed who would commit a deliberate fraud, and ruin the woman who trusted in him.”