"Ay, but there's the rub. I can't fulfil the condition, I fear. It is that I should marry a woman rich enough to replace the money my debts will absorb; a particular woman who doesn't care for me, and whom, knowing the hideous tangle of motives that hangs round the central idea of winning her, I am almost ashamed to ask; but a woman that any man might court; a woman I have loved from the first moment my eyes met hers, who has haunted and distracted me ever since, and who is, I dare say, a great deal too good for me; but a creature I will strive to win, no matter what the cost of success. This girl or rather (for there is a richness and ripeness of nature about her which deserves the term) this fair, sweet woman--I need not name her to you." He stopped, and his passionate pleading eyes held hers. Katherine grew white, half with fear, half with sincere compassion. She tried to speak. At last the words came. "You make me terribly sad, Mr. De Burgh," she said, with trembling lips. "You make me _so_ sorry that I cannot marry you; but I cannot--indeed I cannot. Will Lord De Burgh not pay your debts if he knows you have done your best to persuade me to marry you?" De Burgh laughed a cynical laugh. "You are infinitely practical, Katherine. (I am going to call you Katherine for the next few minutes. Because I think of you as Katherine, I love to speak your name to yourself; it seems to bring me a little nearer to you.) Listen to me. Don't you think you could endure me as a husband? I am a better fellow than I seem, and mine is no foolish boy's fancy. I am a better man when I am near you. Then this old cousin of mine will leave me all he possesses if you are my wife, and the Baroness de Burgh, with money enough to keep her place among her peers, would have no mean position; nor is a husband passionately devoted to you unworthy of consideration." "It is not indeed. But, Mr. De Burgh, do you honestly think that devotion would last? These violent feelings often work their own destruction."