Mrs. Mountstuart's advice was wiser than her procedure, for she stopped
short where he declined to begin. He dived below the surface without
studying that index-page. He had won Miss Middleton's hand; he believed
he had captured her heart; but he was not so certain of his possession
of her soul, and he went after it. Our enamoured gentleman had
therefore no tally of Nature's writing above to set beside his
discoveries in the deeps. Now it is a dangerous accompaniment of this
habit of driving, that where we do not light on the discoveries we
anticipate, we fall to work sowing and planting; which becomes a
disturbance of the gentle bosom. Miss Middleton's features were legible
as to the mainspring of her character. He could have seen that she had
a spirit with a natural love of liberty, and required the next thing to
liberty, spaciousness, if she was to own allegiance. Those features,
unhappily, instead of serving for an introduction to the within, were
treated as the mirror of himself. They were indeed of an amiable
sweetness to tempt an accepted lover to angle for the first person in
the second. But he had made the discovery that their minds differed on
one or two points, and a difference of view in his bride was obnoxious
to his repose. He struck at it recurringly to show her error under
various aspects. He desired to shape her character to the feminine of
his own, and betrayed the surprise of a slight disappointment at her
advocacy of her ideas. She said immediately: "It is not too late,
Willoughby," and wounded him, for he wanted her simply to be material
in his hands for him to mould her; he had no other thought. He lectured
her on the theme of the infinity of love. How was it not too late? They
were plighted; they were one eternally; they could not be parted. She
listened gravely, conceiving the infinity as a narrow dwelling where a
voice droned and ceased not. However, she listened. She became an
attentive listener.