'
'It is horrid to hear you talk like this.' She was leaning over
from her seat, looking black as she was, so much older than her
wont, with something about her of the unworldly serious
thoughtfulness which a mourning always gives. And yet her words
were so worldly, so unfeminine!
'I have got to tell the truth to somebody. It was so, just as I
have said. Of course I did not love him. How could I love him
after what has passed? But there need have been nothing much in
that. I don't suppose that Duke's eldest sons often get married
for love.'
'Miss Boncassen loves him.'
'I dare say the beggar's daughter loved King Cophetua. When you
come to distances such as that, there can be love. The very fact
that a man should have descended so far in the quest of beauty,--
the flattery of it alone,--will produce love. When the angels came
after the daughters of men of course the daughters of men loved
them. The distance between him and me is not great enough to have
produced that sort of worship. There was no reason why Lady Mabel
Grex should not be good enough wife for the son of the Duke of
Omnium.
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