insinutation! But I suppose you are not asking me the question you put
to me just now from dispassionate curiosity."

"A man may want to know!" said the innocent fellow.

I couldn't help laughing out. "This, at any rate, is my story. Camerino
was always there; he was a sort of fixture in the house. If I had
moments of dislike for the divine Bianca, I had no moments of liking for
him. And yet he was a very agreeable fellow, very civil, very
intelligent, not in the least disposed to make a quarrel with me. The
trouble, of course, was simply that I was jealous of him. I don't know,
however, on what ground I could have quarrelled with him, for I had no
definite rights. I can't say what I expected--I can't say what, as the
matter stood, I was prepared to do. With my name and my prospects, I
might perfectly have offered her my hand. I am not sure that she would
have accepted it--I am by no means clear that she wanted that. But she
wanted, wanted keenly, to attach me to her; she wanted to have me about.
I should have been capable of giving up everything--England, my career,
my family--simply to devote myself to her, to live near her and see her
every day."

"Why didn't you do it, then?" asked Stanmer.

"Why don't you?"

"To be a proper rejoinder to my question," he said, rather neatly, "yours
should be asked twenty-five years hence."

"It remains perfectly true that at a given moment I was capable of doing
as I say. That was what she wanted--a rich, susceptible, credulous,