“Well--it is difficult to speak in plain words between you and them. Of course you know that this can’t be expected to give them satisfaction, Arthur. They have not been led on step by step as you have--” “What do you mean?” he said hastily. “Do you mean the vulgar sort of thing that every fool says, that _she_ has been leading me on?” “I certainly did not say so,” said Durant. “I mean they have not been used to all the circumstances like you. Your mind has become familiar by degrees with this family--with everything about them.” “Say it out plainly; don’t mind my feelings,” said the other bitterly, “with the difference between Bates, the tax-collector’s daughter and Sir John Curtis’s son. Well! and what is the difference? All on her side; all in her favour. She getting nothing but additional beauty from all her surroundings, I--doing not much honour to mine.” “I was not making any personal comparison, Arthur,” said Durant, cautiously; “I was saying only--what you will fully allow--that taken just by themselves, without that knowledge of personal excellence which I suppose you have;--that the difference of the circumstances--the difference of manners--well! cannot but startle--shock perhaps--your immediate friends.” “That means that you are shocked and startled. Mr. Bates’s rum-and-water was too much for your delicate nerves,” said Arthur, with a sneer; “and yet you and I have seen worse things that we were not shocked at.” “Arthur, do you want to quarrel with me? or can you suppose I should have come here, if I had felt the slightest desire or intention to quarrel with you?” The young man did not answer for some minutes, then he threw himself into a chair by the table and concealed his face from the other’s gaze, supporting his head on his hands. “Don’t you think I know everything you can say?” he cried; “it is plain enough. They are not like us--there are things in them which even I don’t relish. Their ways are more homely, their manners more simple than we have been used to.” “If it was only simplicity,” said Durant, shrugging his shoulders, and thinking of the blandishments of the Misses Matilda and Sarah Jane. “Well,” said Arthur, with a sudden outbreak, “call it what you like, what disagreeable name you please, and then I ask you what have you got to say to _her_? It is she I am going to marry, not her family. What have you got to say to HER? She is the person to be thought of. Old Bates is an old tax-collector, and the mother a good-natured old woman, and the sisters flirts if you please; I don’t say anything to the contrary; but what have you to say against the girl herself? What of HER?” “Arthur! I have nothing to say; how could I? She sat behind backs, with you to screen her. I saw that she was pretty--”