"You are not silly, I know, dear," she went on; "in fact, I think you are too much the other way. You like analyzing and picking things to bits, and saying, 'This seems to me faulty here, and that seems to me exaggerated there.' I assure you it is a mistake. And when you say you do not love him, you are using expressions of the meaning of which you have no idea. You don't know what love is--no girl can. You may feel attracted to a handsome face as you can be attracted by a landscape or a piece of jewellery, but no one with the slightest sense of refinement could marry a man because he was handsome. It is a grossly indelicate idea, and one I am sure which you never entertained." "I was not proposing to marry any man because of his good looks," said Maud. "No, dear, I am certain you were not; and I was only saying in the abstract that to do such a thing would be an inconceivable folly. If your husband was Adonis himself, you would forget he was even passably good-looking in a fortnight. Dear me, yes! one gets used to nothing so quickly. And in the same way and with the same speed you get used to the absence of good looks. Anthony Maxwell, I allow, has but small claim to them; and I was only wondering whether, when you said that you did not love him, you did not have a half-conscious idea in your mind that if he was very handsome you might have. Dearest Maud, how wonderfully well you are looking! no wonder Anthony fell in love with you." Again the corner of Maud's mouth twitched. "I hope that was not the cause," she said, "for you have just told me what an absurd reason that is for wanting to marry anybody!" For the moment Mrs. Brereton had a violent desire to box those eligible ears, but restrained it, and proceeded to propound her philosophy of matrimony with the most admirable lucidity. "Ah, that is where men are different from us," she said. "It is part of the province of women, as dear Mr. Austin says, to be beautiful, but it is quite outside the province of men. Look at your father now, Maud; he has perhaps less pretentions to good looks than any one I ever saw. But what a happy, what a blessed"--and the word did not stick--"marriage ours has been! Looking back even now, I have never yet seen a man whom I would sooner have chosen. And long, long ago--a year ago at least--I thought that if only dear Anthony would be attracted by you, what a happy thing it would be. It is silly to expect high romance. High romance does not exist for ninety-nine hundredths of the world--luckily, I am sure. And I am sure you are not romantic."