"If," he continues, very gravely, "marriage were a temporary connection, that lasted a year--five years say--or that could be dissolved at pleasure, there might be no great harm in entering upon it with the sort of negative liking, the absence of repugnance for one another, which is all that we can boast; but since it is a bargain for all time, and that there is no getting out of it except by the gate of death or disgrace, I think we ought both to reflect on it more seriously than we have yet done before undertaking it." "It is rather late in the day to say all this," retorts she, indignantly. "You have known me all my life; you must have been well aware that I never could enter into those highflown, romantic notions, which I have heard you yourself ridicule a hundred times. These objections should have occurred to you before you proposed to me, and not now, when we have been engaged two months, and when our marriage has been discussed as a settled thing by all our acquaintance." "You are right," he answers, quietly. "They should have occurred to me before; but, in justice to myself, I must say that they would never have occurred to me: I should have remained in the same state of supine indifference to everything in which I came here, had not you yourself thrown me in the way of Esther Craven." She sits upright in her chair; her pale, handsome face paler, harder than usual, in her great anger. "The drift of this long tirade, when translated into plain English, is, I suppose, that you wish to marry Esther Craven instead of me?" He is silent. "Is it so?" she repeats, her voice raised several notes above its wonted low key. "When I am engaged to one woman," he answers, slowly, reluctantly, yet steadily, "I hope I am not dishonourable enough willingly to harbour the thought of marriage with any other." The Gerard diamonds flash before her mind's eye: they are so big, and numerous--necklace, aigrette, stomacher. The idea of seeing them gleam restless in Esther's hair, on Esther's fair neck, is insupportable to her. She will not release him, ardently as he wishes it; she will hold him by a strong chain that will not snap--his honour. "I am glad to hear it," she answers, coldly. "In common fairness to me, you could hardly have entertained such an idea. It is a great disadvantage to a girl to be engaged, to have her engagement as widely known as mine has been, and then to have it broken off; people never think the same of her again." He turns to the window, to hide his bitter disappointment. "Very well," he answers, calmly; "things will remain as they are, I suppose, then? I only thought it right to warn you how small a chance of happiness there is in a marriage so loveless as ours: for the rest you must blame yourself." CHAPTER XXXIX.