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you say, I’m caught. Certainly it won’t be pleasant for you to
remember this, but your pain will be in your own thoughts.
I shall never reproach you.’
‘I don’t think you ever will,’ said Ralph. ‘It’s not in the
least the sort of marriage I thought you’d make.’
‘What sort of marriage was that, pray?’
‘Well, I can hardly say. I hadn’t exactly a positive view of
it, but I had a negative. I didn’t think you’d decide for-well,
for that type.’
‘What’s the matter with Mr. Osmond’s type, if it be one?
His being so independent, so individual, is what I most see
in him,’ the girl declared. ‘What do you know against him?
You know him scarcely at all.’
‘Yes,’ Ralph said, ‘I know him very little, and I confess
I haven’t facts and items to prove him a villain. But all the
same I can’t help feeling that you’re running a grave risk.’
‘Marriage is always a grave risk, and his risk’s as grave
as mine.’
‘That’s his affair! If he’s afraid, let him back out. I wish to
God he would.’
Isabel reclined in her chair, folding her arms and gazing
a while at her cousin. ‘I don’t think I understand you,’ she
said at last coldly. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘I believed you’d marry a man of more importance.’
Cold, I say, her tone had been, but at this a colour like a
flame leaped into her face. ‘Of more importance to whom?
It seems to me enough that one’s husband should be of im-
portance to one’s self!’
Ralph blushed as well; his attitude embarrassed him.

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