You are Constancy.«
    »No.« She coloured. »I am in with the rest. I do not say I should have done
the same. But I have the knowledge that I must not sit in judgement on her. I
can waver.«
    She coloured again. She was anxious that he should know her to be not that
stupid statue of Constancy in a corner doating on the antic Deception.
Reminiscences of the interview overnight made it oppressive to her to hear
herself praised for always pointing like the needle. Her newly enfranchised
individuality pressed to assert its existence. Vernon, however, not seeing this
novelty, continued, to her excessive discomfort, to baste her old abandoned
image with his praises. They checked hers; and moreover he had suddenly
conceived an envy of her life-long, uncomplaining, almost unaspiring, constancy
of sentiment. If you know lovers when they have not reason to be blissful, you
will remember that in this mood of admiring envy they are given to fits of
uncontrollable maundering. Praise of constancy, moreover, smote shadowily a
certain inconstant, enough to seem to ruffle her smoothness and do no hurt. He
found his consolation in it, and poor Lætitia writhed. Without designing to
retort, she instinctively grasped at a weapon of defence in further exalting his
devotedness; which reduced him to cast his head to the heavens and implore them
to partially enlighten her. Nevertheless, maunder he must; and he recurred to it
in a way so utterly unlike himself that Lætitia stared in his face. She wondered
whether there could be anything secreted behind this everlasting theme of
constancy. He took her awakened gaze for a summons to asseverations of
sincerity, and out they came. She would have fled from him, but to think of
flying was to think how little it was that urged her to fly, and yet the thought
of remaining and listening to praises undeserved and no longer flattering, was a
torture.
    »Mr. Whitford, I bear no comparison with you.«
    »I do and must set you for my example, Miss Dale.«
    »Indeed you do wrongly; you do not know me.«
    »I could say that. For years ...!«
    »Pray, Mr. Whitford!«
    »Well, I have admired it. You show us how self can be smothered.«
    »An echo would be a retort on you!«
    »On me? I am never thinking of anything else.«
    »I could say that.«
    »You are necessarily conscious of not swerving.«
    »But I do; I waver
