"I should think you ought to be quite open, quite plain with me. Not pretend to care more than you did—if—but I don't think you could pretend; you could only keep from saying much. And that might deceive her. I could not bear to be deceived, if I were Fulvia. I would like to know how you really felt. I should wish you to speak out." "Even supposing—supposing you cared a little for me?" "Yes; even supposing that!" Ethel knew that Fulvia did care, more than a little, and she was sure from Nigel's tone that he knew it too. She believed that Mr. Carden-Cox's anxiety to bring about the engagement lay also in a knowledge of this fact. "Yes," Ethel repeated firmly. "I think it would be worse, if one cared for somebody very much, to marry him, and then to find out that he had only proposed because he thought it right. Much worse than if one did not care for him at all. I don't think I could ever bear it—ever forgive him. It would be wronging Fulvia—cruelly. Oh it is always, always, best to be quite true, quite outspoken. I am sure it is. If you feel that you ought to propose, then you are right to propose. But you would not be right if you allowed Fulvia to think that you cared for her more than you do care. If it is only—only duty—she ought to understand." How strange it seemed to Ethel that he should come and ask her this—ask her, as it were, to sign away her own happiness! Ethel's was an intensely conscientious nature. She would never turn aside from what was right merely because it gave her pain. Nigel had put this question before her as a question of right and wrong, and she could do what not one woman in a thousand is capable of: she could view it dispassionately, weighing the absolute right and absolute wrong without reference to her own desires. If Nigel had not known her to be capable of so much, he could not have come to her for help. He came, not because he loved, though he did love, but because he entirely trusted her. Fulvia's was a fine nature, yet Fulvia could not emulate Ethel here. Self would have swayed her decision; but it did not sway Ethel's. At the moment she did not even see a certain hope involved in her advice, a hope which flashed quickly upon Nigel. Although she felt in the abstract that she could not herself marry a man who should propose to her from motives of duty, she had not the smallest doubt that Fulvia would accept. "That might be a way out of the difficulty," Nigel said, speaking as if involuntarily. Ethel did not at once understand. "But would it be—honest—right? Would it not be a mere farce? To ask her, and tell her I do not wish it! Would it not be adding insult to injury—almost cruel?"