"Because"--her face shrewd and wilful as it had been sorrowful just
now--"I am by no means certain that I can do better than to marry
him. He is rich, good-looking (so people say!), well-born,
gentlemanly, and pleasant of temper. An imposing array of
advantages, you see! I might go further, and fare very much worse.
We shall not expect to pass our days in gazing at sunsets and
walking in the moonlight, you know. It is not every woman who can
marry the man she loves best. While the right to select and to woo
is usurped by the masculine portion of the community, it must,
perforce, be Hobson's choice with an uncountable majority of
feminines. I should not complain. The stall allotted to me by
Hobson--alias Fate--might hold a worse-conditioned animal than my
worshipping swain."
"What a wicked rattle you are!" Mabel said, affecting to box her
ears. "I could not love you if I believed you to be in earnest. As
to your figure of the stabled steed--this disapproving customer has
the consolation that she need not accept him, unless she wishes to
do so. She has the invaluable privilege of saying 'no' as often and
obstinately as she pleases."
"I deny it," said Rosa, perversely. "Parents, in this age, do not
make a custom of locking up refractory daughters in nunneries or
garrets until they consent to wed Baron Buncombe or my Lord Nozoo,
but there are, nevertheless, compulsory marriages in plenty. Society
warns me to make a creditable match, upon penalty, if I decline, of
being pointed out to the succeeding--and a fast-succeeding
generation it is! as a disappointed old maid--passée belle, who
squandered her capital of fascinations, and has become a pauper upon
public toleration, while my mother, sisters, and brothers are
growing impatient at my many and profitless flirtations, and anxious
to see me 'settled.' My mother's pet text, since I was sixteen, has
been her prayerful desire that I, the last of her nestlings, should
make choice of a tenable bough and helpful partner, and set up a
separate establishment before she dies. When that event occurs, I
shall be, in effect, homeless--a boarder around upon my rebukeful
relatives, who 'always thought how my trifling would end,' and who
will be forever scribbling 'vanitas vanitatum,' upon the tombstone
of my departed youth--my day of beaux and offers. You may shake your
head and look heroic with all your might! You are no better off than
I, should your brother see cause to refuse his consent to your
marriage with Mr. Chilton. He could, and probably would, coerce you
into another alliance before you were twenty-one. There are so many
ways of letting the life out of a woman's heart, when it is already
faint from disappointment! The spirit is oftener broken by
unyielding, but not seemingly cruel pressure, than by outrageous
violence. And Winston would show himself an adept in such arts, if
occasion offered."