wither you. It has never dimly occurred to her as conceivable
that you would venture to be in love with her, that you would
dare to lift your eyes to her--you who are nothing, to her who
is all. Yes--nothing, nobody. In her view, you are just a
harmless nobody, whose society she tolerates for kindness'
sake--and faute de mieux. It is precisely because she deems
you a nobody--because she is profoundly conscious of the gulf
that separates you from her--that she can condescend to be
amiably familiar. If you were of a rank even remotely
approximating to her own, she would be a thousand times more
circumspect. Remember--she does not dream that you are Felix
Wildmay. He is a mere name to her; and his story is an amusing
little romance, perfectly external to herself, which she
discusses with entirely impersonal interest. Tell her by all
means, if you like Say, 'I am Wildmay--you are Pauline.' And
see how amazed she will be, and how incensed, and how
indignant."

Then he would look up at the castle stonily, in a mood of
desperate renunciation, and vaguely meditate packing his
belongings, and going home to England.

At other moments a third answer would seem the plain one:
something between these extremes of optimism and pessimism, a
compromise, it not a reconciliation.

"Come! Let us be calm, let us be judicial. The consequences
of our actions, here below, if hardly ever so good as we could
hope, are hardly ever so bad as we might fear. Let us regard
this matter in the light of that guiding principle. True, she