She was fully conscious that the inference was not a
strange one to draw from her conduct that evening. But now the mood of
impulse was entirely gone; she considered the matter in a cool spirit,
and her talk with Dick Benyon assumed unlooked-for importance in her
deliberations. To marry Marchmont was a step entirely in harmony with
the ideal which her family and the world had of her, which Marchmont
himself most thoroughly and undoubtingly believed in. If she were really
what she was supposed to be, the match would satisfy her as well as it
would everybody else. But if she were quite different in her heart? In
that case it might indeed be urged that no marriage would or could
permanently satisfy her or the whole of her nature. This was likely
enough; to see how often something of that kind happened it was,
unfortunately, only necessary to run over ten or a dozen names which
offered themselves promptly enough from the list of her acquaintance.
Still to marry knowing you would not be satisfied was to drop below the
common fate of marrying knowing that you might not be; it gave up the
golden chance; it abandoned illusion just where illusion seemed most
necessary.
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