Fate wills, - I can manage the hottest. To such a creature as this, I should
like to be first tutor and then husband. I would teach her my language, my
habits, and my principles, and then I would reward her with my love.
    Reward her! lord of the creation! Reward her! ejaculated she, with a curled
lip.
    And be repaid a thousandfold.
    If she willed it, Monseigneur.
    And she should will it.
    You have stipulated for any temper Fate wills. Compulsion is flint and a
blow to the metal of some souls.
    And love the spark it elicits.
    Who cares for the love that is but a spark - seen, flown upward, and gone?
    I must find my orphan girl. Tell me how, Miss Keeldar.
    Advertise; and be sure you add, when you describe the qualifications, she
must be a good plain cook.
    I must find her; and when I do find her, I shall marry her.
    Not you! and her voice took a sudden accent of peculiar scorn.
    I liked this: I had roused her from the pensive mood in which I had first
found her: I would stir her further.
    Why doubt it?
    You marry!
    Yes, - of course; nothing more evident than that I can, and shall.
    The contrary is evident, Mr. Moore.
    She charmed me in this mood: waxing disdainful, half insulting, pride,
temper, derision, blent in her large fine eye, that had, just now, the look of a
merlin's.
    Favour me with your reasons for such an opinion, Miss Keeldar.
    How will you manage to marry, I wonder?
    I shall manage it with ease and speed when I find the proper person.
    Accept celibacy! (and she made a gesture with her hand as if she gave me
something) take it as your doom!
    No: you cannot give what I already have. Celibacy has been mine for thirty
years. If you wish to offer me a gift, a parting present, a keepsake, you must
change the boon.
    Take worse, then!
    How? What?
    I now felt, and looked, and spoke eagerly. I was unwise to quit my
sheet-anchor of calm even for an instant: it deprived me of an advantage and
transferred it to her. The little spark of temper dissolved in sarcasm, and
eddied over her countenance in the ripples of a mocking smile.
    Take a wife that has paid you court to save your modesty, and thrust herself
upon you to spare your scruples.