'Very bright and intelligent, is she?' she muttered. 'That may or may not be. A man in love not merely finds a Venus in the object of his admiration, but credits her with innumerable qualities which she never possessed; and Tito in this respect is worse than the majority of men, for he allows his folly, which he calls his fancy, completely to run away with him. The girl is pretty--I remember that distinctly--but I cannot call to mind anything else about her, and it is just such an alliance as would please that weak-minded Tito; to have a young girl sit and worship him all day, and to realise all his romantic aspirations of love in a cottage, with the cottage left out and a charming villa with all kinds of luxury instead, would render him supremely happy. And I am to sit by actually; and when we meet I am to be specially introduced, and to hear told before my face what a dear friend I have been, and under what obligations he is to me; and to imagine her being told behind my back--for the man is vain and weak and boastful, like most of them--what a conquest he had made of me, and how I had followed at the wheels of my lord's chariot. No, I do not think that I can quite brook that from any man. One might put up with a good deal from a great creature who was obviously one's master, but from Tito, who was my slave, and whose every thought and action I have directed since I first knew him, it is too absurd. I always knew that he would marry, for his romance, like his cynicism, and most of his other self-asserted characteristics, is a sham, and he would be far happier in the honest prose of domestic life; but I intended that his wife should be one of my choosing; and if this young lady really answers his description, she is by no means what I should have selected for him. He would be convenient for many reasons, even as a married man, under one's thumb; and with a wife of any sort of intelligence that would of course be impossible.