"It matters to me."
"You mean you are actually thinking of him? Of course, he is most estimable, and a gentleman, one can see that at a glance, but isn't he a trifle dull, borné?"
"I think I could get on better with a dull person, if he was kind and honourable, than a clever one. I've had one clever one—who wasn't honourable. You see, I'm only good-looking. I'm nothing else. That's why I like being with the Miss Blinketts and Mrs. Nicholls. I forgot perhaps you don't know Mrs. Nicholls is the washerwoman. A clever man would get tired of me, or bored with me, and he would expect so much, understandings and discriminations and things which I could not give, or only by a dreadful effort. If I married Roger, he would be pleased with me as I am."
"I have no doubt he would."
"And I should be pleased with him too."
"I am not so sure of that."
"I am, but for some time past I have wished he knew anything there was to know against me."
"Well, but, Annette, you know we agreed—you had my full approval—that you should tell everything to the man you were engaged to."
"I thought that all right at the time—at least, I mean I never thought about it again. But, of course, I did not know Roger then, and I had not realized how cruel it would be to him to go farther and farther, and think more and more of me, and get it firmly rooted in his mind that he would like to marry me,—it takes a long time for him to get his mind fixed,—and then, when I had accepted him and he was feeling very comfortable, to have this—this ugly thing—sprung upon him."