"Easier said than done," he answers ruefully. "I might as well advise you to get the better of your affection for Jack." "I don't see the parallel," rejoined she, coldly, feeling as if there was sacrilege in the comparison. "My love for Jack is a natural instinct, built too upon the foundation of lifelong obligations, endless benefits, countless kindnesses. What kindness have I ever shown you? I sewed a button on your glove once, and once I pinned a rose on your coat." "I have the rose still." She says "Pshaw!" pettishly, and turns away her head. "Perhaps you are afraid of marrying on small means?" suggests Brandon, diffidently, after a while. The gentle clatter and click of dishes carried into the dining-room enters faintly through the shut door. Esther's heart sinks within her. Is he going to begin all over again?--round and round, like a thunderstorm among hills? "I am afraid of marrying on _any_ means," she says, comprehensively. "I particularly dislike the idea; marriage seems to me the end of everything, and I am at the beginning." "But I don't want you to marry me _now_," cries Robert, stammering. "Don't you? You told me just now that you did." "For pity's sake, Esther, don't laugh! it may be play to you, but it is death to me." "I'm not laughing." "Perhaps some day you will feel what I am feeling now." "Perhaps" (doubtfully). "And you will find then that it is no laughing matter." "Perhaps" (still more doubtfully). The clamour of a fresh cohort of plates shaking noisily upon a tray warns Brandon that his time is short. "Esther!" with a sort of despair in his voice, clashing the ridiculous with the pathetic--they are always twin sisters--"I could live upon such a little hope." "What would you have me say?" she cries, standing with fluttering colour, tapping feet, and irritated eyes. "I have told you the plain truth, and it does not please you; must I dress up some pretty falsehood, and tell you that I fell in love with you at first sight, or that after all I find that you are the only man in the world that can make me really happy?" "Say nothing of the kind!" he answers, wincing under her irony. "I have not much to recommend me, we all know that, and I start with the disadvantage of your thinking me rather a bore than otherwise; but other men have overcome even greater obstacles; why should not I? Give me at least a trial!" She is silent. "Say that you will _try_ to like me; there need be no untruth in that." "But if I fail!" says Esther, wavering--partly in sheer weariness of the contest, partly in womanly pity for sufferings which owe their rise to the excess of her own charms. "If you fail you will not have to tell me so; I shall find it out for myself, and--and I shall bear it, I suppose." He ends with a heavy sigh at that too probable possibility.