'I think
I am bound in honour and in duty to marry Miss Boncassen,' he
said. 'And if I understand what you mean, by nobility just as
much.'
'Because you have promised.'
'Not only for that. I have promised and therefore I am bound. She
has;--well, she has said that she loves me, and therefore of course
I am bound. But it not only that.'
'What do you mean?'
'I suppose a man ought to marry the woman he loves;--if he can get
her.'
'No; no; no; not always so. Do you think that love is a passion
that cannot be withstood?'
'But here we are of one mind, sir. When I say how you seemed to
take to her--'
'Take to her! Can I not interest myself in human beings without
wishing to make them flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone? What am
I to think of you? It was but the other day that all that you are
now telling me of Miss Boncassen, you were telling me of Lady
Mabel Grex.' Here poor Silverbridge bit his lips and shook his
head, and looked down upon the ground. This was the weak part of
his case. He could not tell his father the whole story about
Mabel,--that she had coyed his love, so that he had been justified
in thinking himself free from any claim in that direction when he
had encountered the infinitely sweeter charms of Isabel Boncassen.
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