‘I’ll not ask, does your theory make you better, but does it make you happier?’
‘If being duped were an element of bliss, I should say certainly not happier, but I doubt the blissful ignorance of your great moralist. I incline to believe that the better you play any game—life amongst the rest—the higher the pleasure it yields. I can afford to marry, without believing my husband to be a paragon—could you do as much?’
‘I should like to know that I preferred him to any one else.’
‘So should I, and I would only desire to add “to every one else that asked me.” Tell the truth, Kate dearest, we are here all alone, and can afford sincerity. How many of us girls marry the man we should like to marry, and if the game were reversed, and it were to be we who should make the choice—the slave pick out his master—how many, think you, would be wedded to their present mates?’
‘So long as we can refuse him we do not like, I cannot think our case a hard one.’
‘Neither should I if I could stand fast at three-and-twenty. The dread of that change of heart and feeling that will come, must come, ten years later, drives one to compromise with happiness, and take a part of what you once aspired to the whole.’
‘You used to think very highly of Mr. Walpole; admired, and I suspect you liked him.’
‘All true—my opinion is the same still. He will stand the great test that one can go into the world with him and not be ashamed of him. I know, dearest, even without that shake of the head, the small value you attach to this, but it is a great element in that droll contract, by which one person agrees to pit his temper against another’s, and which we are told is made in heaven, with angels as sponsors. Mr. Walpole is sufficiently good-looking to be prepossessing, he is well bred, very courteous, converses extremely well, knows his exact place in life, and takes it quietly but firmly. All these are of value to his wife, and it is not easy to over-rate them.’
‘Is that enough?’
‘Enough for what? If you mean for romantic love, for the infatuation that defies all change of sentiment, all growth of feeling, that revels in the thought, experience will not make us wiser, nor daily associations less admiring, it is not enough. I, however, am content to bid for a much humbler lot. I want a husband who, if he cannot give me a brilliant station, will at least secure me a good position in life, a reasonable share of vulgar comforts, some luxuries, and the ordinary routine of what are called pleasures. If, in affording me these, he will vouchsafe to add good temper, and not high spirits—which are detestable—but fair spirits, I think I can promise him, not that I shall make him happy, but that he will make himself so, and it will afford me much gratification to see it.’