"A pious simpleton who stood in the way of her own happiness. Why, in the name of all that's reasonable, did she refuse to marry Lovelace, when he was willing?"
Tonia flashed an indignant look at him.
"If she could have stooped to marry him she would have proved herself at heart a wanton!" she said, with an outspoken force that startled Kilrush.
Hitherto he had met only two kinds of women—the strictly virtuous, who affected an Arcadian innocence and whose talk was insupportably dull, and the women whose easy morals allowed the widest scope for conversation; but here was a girl of undoubted modesty, who was not afraid to argue upon a hazardous theme.
"You admire Clarissa for her piety, perhaps?" he said. "That is what our fine ladies pretend to appreciate, though they are most of them heathens."
"I admire her for her self-respect," answered Tonia. "That is her highest quality. When was there ever a temper so meek, joined with such fortitude, such heroic resolve?"
"She was a proud, self-willed minx," said Kilrush, entranced with the vivid expression of her face, with the fire in her speech.
"'Twas a woman's pride in her womanhood, a woman fighting against her arch enemy——"
"The man who loved her?"
"The man she loved. 'Twas that made the struggle desperate. She knew she loved him."