The sparkling eye looked steadfastly up, as the musing face looked thoughtfully down. ‘Well?’ said the dolls’ dressmaker, ‘We have found our lady?’
Lizzie nodded, and asked, ‘Shall she be rich?’
‘She had better be, as he’s poor.’
‘She is very rich. Shall she be handsome?’
‘Even you can be that, Lizzie, so she ought to be.’
‘She is very handsome.’
‘What does she say about him?’ asked Miss Jenny, in a low voice: watchful, through an intervening silence, of the face looking down at the fire.
‘She is glad, glad, to be rich, that he may have the money. She is glad, glad, to be beautiful, that he may be proud of her. Her poor heart—’
‘Eh? Her poor heart?’ said Miss Wren.
‘Her heart—is given him, with all its love and truth. She would joyfully die with him, or, better than that, die for him. She knows he has failings, but she thinks they have grown up through his being like one cast away, for the want of something to trust in, and care for, and think well of. And she says, that lady rich and beautiful that I can never come near, “Only put me in that empty place, only try how little I mind myself, only prove what a world of things I will do and bear for you, and I hope that you might even come to be much better than you are, through me who am so much worse, and hardly worth the thinking of beside you.”’