“And I would rather lose the respect of the world by rejecting you than deserve to lose it by accepting you.”
“Fool! Have you no regard for your reputation?”
“Yes; but think it wrong to secure good reputation at the expense of good character.”
“What paradox, what nonsense is that?”
“Oh! they are not synonymous terms, character and reputation; on earth they never have been, on earth they never will be. Often they are antagonistic words. Many of the heroes and martyrs of history, the demigods of our adoration, were men of the best characters, with—while they lived—the worst reputations.”
“Then you have no respect for the good opinion of the world?”
“Yes! my aspiring heart! too much, I fear, for my soul’s good; and I know, I know by all the glorious gifts of Heaven to me, I know by all my mighty power for good or ill, by all my absolute unswerving will to good, I know that I have a right and title, Heaven-patented, not to the passive good opinion, but to the honor, the co-operation of the world.”
“And I tell you, haughty woman, as you stand here a very goddess of pride, I tell you as you stand here beneath these halls, where you should never have stood, invested with all this power, that you should never have possessed, armed with the might of vast wealth and of high talent, arrayed in the magic charms of young womanhood and perfect beauty—I tell you, that you are now—naught that you will be, unless you marry me—a suspected, proscribed, banned, outcast woman!” He expected this to overwhelm her. But she turned her large, dark, solemn eyes, solemn now with prophetic inspiration, upon him, and inquired calmly:
“Why?”
“Listen, girl. You are ambitious, arrogant, scornful. Yet a few words from me will subdue all that, by showing you that you are obliged to marry me. Attend! we made the tour of Europe alone together, putting up at the same hotels, having a common parlor, a common table, a common carriage——”