When he spoke, it was with no trace
of consciousness that the question had been unduly intimate.
"I can't in the least be sure that I shall ever marry,"
he replied, thoughtfully. "I may, and I may not.
But--starting with that proviso--I suppose I haven't
seen any other woman that I'd rather think about marrying
than--than the lady we're speaking of. However, you see
it's all in the air, so far as my plans go."
"In the air be it," the soldier acquiesced, plausibly.
"Let us consider it as if it were in the air--a
possible contingency. This is what I would say--My--
'the lady we are speaking of' is by way of being
a difficult lady--'uncertain, coy, and hard to please'
as Scott says, you know--and it must be a very skilfully-
dressed fly indeed which brings her to the surface.
She's been hooked once, mind, and she has a horror of it.
Her husband was the most frightful brute and ruffian,
you know. I was strongly opposed to the marriage, but her
mother carried it through. But--yes--about her--I think
she is afraid to marry again. If she does ever consent,
it will be because poverty has broken her nerve.
If she is kept on six hundred a year, she may be starved,
so to speak, into taking a husband. If she had sixteen
hundred--either she would never marry at all, or she would
be free to marry some handsome young pauper who caught
her fancy.
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