"And that is true; but love is satisfied with studying her happiness as her father or brother. Some years hence, perhaps in half a year, (for this passion, called wedded or marriage-wishing love, is of sudden growth,) my mind may change and nothing may content me but to have Bess for my wife. Yet I do not expect it."
"Then you are determined against marriage with this girl?"
"Of course; until that love comes which I feel not now; but which, no doubt, will come, when Bess has had the benefit of five or eight years more, unless previously excited by another."
"All this is strange, Arthur. I have heretofore supposed that you actually loved (I mean with the marriage-seeking passion) your Bess."
"I believe I once did; but it happened at a time when marriage was improper; in the life of her father and sister, and when I had never known in what female excellence consisted. Since that time my happier lot has cast me among women so far above Eliza Hadwin,—so far above, and so widely different from any thing which time is likely to make her,—that, I own, nothing appears more unlikely than that I shall ever love her."
"Are you not a little capricious in that respect, my good friend? You have praised your Bess as rich in natural endowments; as having an artless purity and rectitude of mind, which somewhat supersedes the use of formal education; as being full of sweetness and tenderness, and in her person a very angel of loveliness."
"All that is true. I never saw features and shape so delicately beautiful; I never knew so young a mind so quick-sighted and so firm; but, nevertheless, she is not the creature whom I would call my wife. My bosom-slave; counsellor; friend; the mother; the pattern; the tutoress of my children, must be a different creature."
"But what are the attributes of this desirable which Bess wants?"
"Every thing she wants. Age, capacity, acquirements, person, features, hair, complexion, all, all are different from this girl's."
"And pray of what kind may they be?"