“You must take my character and my training a little into consideration,” he said. “If I had been brought up like you I might have thought with you. But, Clare, though I love you more than anything in the world, and would not vex you for all Arden, still I cannot change my nature. Arden is only a very small spot in England, dear, not to speak of the world; and I can’t look at the big world through Arden spectacles. You must not ask it of me; anything else I will do to please you. I will give up dining with these people if you wish it. Of course I don’t care for their dinner; but they looked as if they wanted to be kind----” “They wanted to come to Arden, to know you and me, and get admittance among the county families,” said Clare in one breath. “Well, perhaps. I suppose we are all mean wretches more or less,” he said. “Suppose we give up the Pimpernels; but you must not ask me to avoid everybody who has anything to do, or to content myself with the old groove. For instance, I like pictures, though you say the Ardens don’t----” “That is not what I meant,” said Clare, with a blush; “I meant----” “You meant opposition, and to snub that fat, good-tempered man; and you only made me uncomfortable--_he_ did not feel it. But I like pictures, Clare, and the people who paint them. I have known a great many in my life; and when I like any man I cannot pause to ask what is his pedigree, or what is his occupation. Putting aside the Pimpernels, you must still make up your mind to that.” “But you will put aside the Pimpernels?” said Clare, with pleading looks. “I will see about it,” said Edgar. It was the first time he had not yielded, and Clare felt it. She felt too that a shade of real difference had stolen between them--almost of separation. She had been unreasonable, and had put herself in the wrong; and he had set up a principle of action, erected as it were his standard, and made it clearly apparent what he would and what he would not do. She went away to her own room with a certain soreness in her heart. She had committed herself. Certain words of her own and certain words of his came back to her with the poignant shame of youth--what she had said about the pictures, and what Edgar had said of her rudeness, and of the antagonism which only made him uncomfortable. She had made herself ridiculous, she thought--that worst of all offences against one’s self. It seemed to the proud Clare as if neither she nor any one else could forget how ridiculous she had made herself; and more than ever with tenfold force of enmity she hated those unlucky Pimpernels.