‘I don’t see why not. He is very much the stamp of man girls admire.’
‘Not girls like Nina; not girls who aspire to a position in life, and who know that the little talents of the salon no more make a man of the world than the tricks of the circus will make a foxhunter. These ambitious women—she is one of them—will marry a hopeless idiot if he can bring wealth and rank and a great name; but they will not take a brainless creature who has to work his way up in the world. If she has accepted Walpole, there is pique in it, or ennui, or that uneasy desire of change that girls suffer from like a malady.’
‘I cannot tell you why, but I know she has accepted him.’
‘Women are not insensible to the value of second thoughts.’
‘You mean she might throw him over—might jilt him?’
‘I’ll not employ the ugly word that makes the wrong it is only meant to indicate; but there are few of our resolves in life to which we might not move amendment, and the changed opinion a woman forms of a man before marriage would become a grievous injury if it happened after.’
‘But must she of necessity change?’
‘If she marry Walpole, I should say certainly. If a girl has fair abilities and a strong temper—and Nina has a good share of each—she will endure faults, actual vices, in a man, but she’ll not stand littleness. Walpole has nothing else; and so I hope to prove to her to-morrow and the day after—in fact, during those eight or ten days you tell me he will be absent.’
‘Will she let you? Will she listen to you?’
‘Not at first—at least, not willingly, or very easily; but I will show her, by numerous little illustrations and even fables, where these small people not only spoil their fortunes in life, but spoil life itself; and what an irreparable blunder it is to link companionship with one of them. I will sometimes make her laugh, and I may have to make her cry—it will not be easy, but I shall do it—I shall certainly make her thoughtful; and if you can do this day by day, so that a woman will recur to the same theme pretty much in the same spirit, you must be a sorry steersman, Master Dick, but you will know how to guide these thoughts and trace the channel they shall follow.’