Macbride considered a moment before he spoke.
"It's my opinion that there never was a Dowsett."
"Macbride! Why, she told me so herself!"
"I imagine that she may have told you a good many things which belong to that order of fiction which is distinctly a stranger to truth." He was silent; although I could not see his face, I guessed, somehow, he was smiling. "It is my further opinion--I mention it to you, because I think that you are beginning to suspect as much yourself--that the Princess is no better than she ought to be."
I gasped. If she had been doing us! What would Mrs Beamish say? I had staked my reputation on the woman.
"Do you know that she has promised to marry Douglas?"
"I know she has. I also know--from her own lips, so the authority is an unquestionable one--that there is more than one man in Beachington who is under the pleasing impression that she has promised to marry him. For instance, she has more than half promised to marry me. And I, for my part, am more than half inclined to marry her."
"Macbride! when you say that you think she is no better than she ought to be!"
"If you consider, how many women are there who are any better than they ought to be? Where shall you find a perfect woman? And Heaven protect us from her when she's found. Possibly you misconstrue my meaning. When I state that I believe her to be no better than she ought to be, I make a statement which, in my judgment, applies to all the women I ever met, not to speak of all the men. I think--I am not sure, but I think--that I understand the Princess Margaretta. I think, also, that she understands me. There is one advantage gained--a common understanding--especially as I am myself, in some respects, a rather peculiar person." For the first time he stood up, turned, and faced me. "Beamish, the Princess Margaretta is a clever woman. What she wants is a clever man. With a clever man she might be happy, and she might make him happy. Her misfortune has been that, up to now, the men she has encountered have been, generally speaking, fools."
I could not make him out. And I not only could not make him out, but I did not know what to say to him. What can you say to a man who tells you that he thinks a woman is no better than she ought to be, and then, in the very same breath, that he is more than half inclined to marry her? And that when he knows that she has not only promised to marry another man, but, as he more than hints, half a dozen other men besides.