"Do you think he will make her happy?" persisted Mrs. Seaton.
Paul was silent for a moment before he answered: "Not as happy as I could have made her".
"He won't understand her, I suppose?"
"No."
"Oh! Paul, why did you ever let her go?"
"Because I was a poor man. If her marriage with me had involved no sacrifice on her part, I would have fought to the death rather than give her up; and I would have made her marry me in spite of everything, for I know I could have made her happy. But I could not force her to accept poverty after I had seen that she hung back."
"But love matters more to a woman than anything else; and she would rather be poor with the man she loves than be rich without him."
"I don't think that you and Joanna quite understand how much wealth and rank and things of that kind matter to a woman brought up as Isabel has been," said Paul, "to you, they are outside considerations which do not enter into your inner life at all; but to her, they are the very air she breathes."
"Then, do you mean to say that she could not be happy without them?"
"No, I don't; I think, on the contrary, that it is not in the nature of such things to make Isabel happy. But she would have to resign them of her own free will. I could hardly force her to sacrifice them because I happened to think that she could be happy without them—especially as my own happiness depended upon her sacrifice,"