“I don’t know why. I insist upon your telling me,” she repeated, fierily.
“You know that you’re Sir William Silver’s heiress, I suppose,” he suggested.
“Oh, come! that’s not my fault. How could that matter?”
“Look here, I’m not going to make an ass of myself by explaining the obvious,” he declared.
“I daresay I’m very stupid, but it isn’t obvious to me.”
“Well, then, let’s drop the subject,” he proposed.
“I’ll not drop the subject till you’ve elucidated it. If you were in love with me, Will, and I were in love with you, how on earth could it matter, my being Sir William Silvers heiress?”
“Wouldn’t I seem a bit mercenary’ if I asked you to marry me?”
“Oh, Will!” she remonstrated. “Don’t tell me you’re such a prig as that. What! if you loved me, if I loved you, you’d give me up, you’d break my heart, just for fear lest idiotic people, whose opinions don’t matter any more than the opinions of so many deep-sea fish, might think you mercenary! When you and I both knew in our own two souls that you really weren’t mercenary’ in the least! You’d pay me a poor compliment, Will. Isn’t it conceivable that a man might love me for myself?”
“You state the case too simply. You make no allowances for the shades and complexities of a man’s feelings.”