"But I should wish to make you think how great is the leap in the world
which you are about to take." Then again they walked on for many steps
before she answered him.

"Tell me, then, John," she said, when she had sufficiently considered
what words she should speak; and as she spoke a bright colour suffused
her face, and her eyes flashed almost with anger. "What leap do you
mean? Do you mean a leap upwards?"

"Well, yes; I hope it will be so."

"In one sense, certainly, it would be a leap upwards. To be the wife
of the man I loved; to have the privilege of holding his happiness in
my hand; to know that I was his own--the companion whom he had chosen
out of all the world--that would, indeed, be a leap upwards; a leap
almost to heaven, if all that were so. But if you mean upwards in any
other sense--"

"I was thinking of the social scale."

"Then, Captain Broughton, your thoughts were doing me dishonour."

"Doing you dishonour!"

"Yes, doing me dishonour. That your father is, in the world's esteem,
a greater man than mine is doubtless true enough. That you, as a man,
are richer than I am as a woman, is doubtless also true. But you
dishonour me, and yourself also, if these things can weigh with you
now."