"Did she not love you?"
Mowbray smiled sadly.
"You say that in a tone of great surprise," he replied; "there is scarcely ground for such astonishment."
"I should think any woman might love you," murmured the boy.
Mowbray smiled again as sadly as before, and said:
"Well, I see you are determined to make me your devoted friend, by reaching my heart through my vanity. But let me continue. I said that the obstacles in my way were not objections on the part of Philippa's friends—that was her name, Philippa: do not ask me more."
"No," said the boy.
"The barrier was her own nature. I had mistaken it; in the height of my pride I had dreamed that my vision had pierced to the bottom of her nature, to the inmost recesses of her heart: I was mistaken. I had gazed upon the woman, throwing the heiress out of the question; you see I was hopelessly enslaved by the woman before dreaming of the heiress," he added, with a melancholy smile.
Hoffland made no reply.
"Now I come to the end, and I shall not detain you much longer from the moral. I visited her repeatedly. I found more to admire than I expected even—more to be repelled by, however, than my mind had prepared me for. I found this young girl with many noble qualities—but these qualities seemed to me obscured by her eternal consciousness of riches: her suspicion, in itself an unwomanly trait, was intense."