“I don’t know,” answered Godwin, shortly, “it depends on who my wife is.” “What! I thought you said you were engaged!” “I am--or very near it. But I am going to give you one more chance.” “And Miss Brownlow?” Godwin shrugged his shoulders. “She’ll suffer less at the loss of such an ordinary admirer as I than she would by gaining such an ordinary husband as I should make--to her.” “And do you think,” asked Deborah, looking full at him with an expression of great scorn, “that that would be honorable conduct? You who know what an opportunity of marriage means to a girl in a country town?” Godwin returned her look very straightforwardly. “Isn’t that rather a low point of view to look at the matter from?” “It is probably hers.” “Well, that admission condemns you. For I decline to think that the well-being and happiness of a girl whose only aim in existence is to catch a husband by any means she can is of so much consequence as--well, as mine. Is that frank enough?” Deborah was a little taken aback by this straightforward egotism. “Then you must logically deny any sort of equality between men and women?” “I do, emphatically. Women are our superiors or our inferiors, never our equals. And better education for them will not alter this fact; it will accentuate it.” “Now you are running right away from the point, which is this. Is the inequality between the sexes so great that a man may jilt a girl for his own happiness without losing his right to be considered an honorable man?” “Well, he loses the first freshness of his honor; but if he gets rid of a girl who could be nothing better than his housekeeper, to get one who will be, in the noblest sense of the word, his wife, he gains a great deal more than he loses.” “And if she brings an action for breach of promise?” “Then she loses the cloak which has so far covered her natural want of delicacy.” “You are as hard and didactic as ever.” “I’m not hard; but I have a few gleams of sense left shining through the mass of cobwebs with which you have filled my head.” “I don’t understand the simile.” “Well, I’m in love with you; I love you so much that I’d rather come to you without a rag of honor left than be saluted as the noblest man in the world by any other woman. Just as you, who know that Rees has turned out such a scamp that we daren’t inquire into his actions, would think nothing of lowering yourself to the point of forgiving him.” Deborah got up and touched the bell for tea, too much agitated to answer him. Godwin had not only spoken to her with less reserve than ever before, but had looked at her with passion, and finally poured out his words with a vehemence quite in sharp contrast with his accustomed matter-of-fact manner. “Well,” said he, rising quickly and leaning over her as she rang the bell; “do you think more of me now than you did before?” “No. Less,” she answered sharply.