She seemed resentful. His omissions as a correspondent were explicable
in a sentence. It had to be deferred.

Reviewing for a moment the enormous internal conflict undergone by him
during the period of the silence between them, he wondered at the
vastness of the love which had conquered objections, to him so poignant.

There was at least no seeing of the public blot on her birth when looking
on her face. Nor when thinking of the beauty of her character, in
absence or in presence, was there any. He had mastered distaste to such
a degree, that he forgot the assistance he had received from the heiress
for enabling him to appreciate the fair young girl. Money is the
imperious requirement of superior station; and more money and more: in
these our modern days of the merchant's wealth, and the miner's, and the
gigantic American and Australian millionaires, high rank is of necessity
vowed, in peril of utter eclipse; to the possession of money. Still it
is, when assured, a consideration far to the rear with a gentleman in
whose bosom love and the buzzing world have fought their battle out. He
could believe it thoroughly fought out, by the prolonged endurance of a
contest lasting many days and nights; in the midst of which, at one time,
the task of writing to tell her of his withdrawal from the engagement,
was the cause of his omission to write.

As to her character, he dwelt on the charm of her recovered features, to
repress an indicative dread of some intrepid force behind it, that might
be unfeminine, however gentle the external lineaments. Her features, her
present aristocratic deficiency of colour, greatly pleased him; her
character would submit to moulding. Of all young ladies in the world,
she should be the one to shrink from a mental independence and hold to