In his suit he had prospered--perhaps too easily. He loved the girl,
or at least loved the modified reflection of her in his own mind;
while she, thoroughly admiring the dignity, good looks, and
accomplishments of the man whose attentions flattered her
self-opinion, accorded him deference enough to encourage his vainest
hopes. Although she knew little, fluttering over the merest surfaces
of existence, she had sense enough to know that he talked sense to
her, and foolishness enough to put it down to her own credit, while
for the sense itself she cared little or nothing. And Greatorex,
without even knowing what she was rough-hewn for, would take upon him
to shape her ends!--an ambition the Divinity never permits to succeed:
he who fancies himself the carver finds himself but the chisel, or
indeed perhaps only the mallet, in the hand of the true workman.

During the days of his courtship, then, Letty listened and smiled, or
answered with what he took for a spiritual response, when it was
merely a brain-echo. Looking down into the pond of her being, whose
surface was, not yet ruffled by any bubbling of springs from below, he
saw the reflection of himself and was satisfied. An able man on his
hobby looks a centaur of wisdom and folly; but if he be at all a wise
man, the beast will one day or other show him the jade's favour of
unseating him. Meantime Augustus Greatorex was fooled, not by poor
little Letty, who was not capable of fooling him, but by himself.
Letty had made no pretences; had been interested, and had shown her
interest; had understood, or seemed to understand, what he said to
her, and forgotten it the next moment--had no pocket to put it in, did
not know what to do with it, and let it drop into the Limbo of Vanity.
They had not been married many days before the scouts of advancing
disappointment were upon them. Augustus resisted manfully for a time.
But the truth was each of the two had to become a great deal more than