e, originally small, has not suffered from my husbandry. I have
excellent health, an excellent temper, and the purest ardour of
affection for your person. I found not on my merits, but on your
indulgence. Miss Musgrave, will you honour me with your hand in
marriage?

DOROTHY. Mr. Austin, if I thought basely of marriage, I should perhaps
accept your offer. There was a time, indeed, when it would have made me
proudest among women. I was the more deceived, and have to thank you for
a salutary lesson. You chose to count me as a cipher in your rolls of
conquest; for six months you left me to my fate; and you come here
to-day--prompted, I doubt not, by an honourable impulse--to offer this
tardy reparation. No; it is too late.

AUSTIN. Do you refuse?

DOROTHY. Yours is the blame; we are no longer equal. You have robbed me
of the right to marry any one but you; and do you think me, then, so
poor in spirit as to accept a husband on compulsion?

AUSTIN. Dorothy, you loved me once.

DOROTHY. Ay, you will never guess how much: you will never live to
understand how ignominious a defeat that conquest was. I loved and
trusted you: I judged you by myself; think, then, of my humiliation,
when, at the touch of trial, all your qualities proved false, and I
beheld you the slave of the meanest vanity--selfish, untrue, base!
Think, sir, what a humbling of my pride to have been thus deceived; to
have taken for my idol such a commonplace imposture as yourself; to have
loved--yes, loved--such a shadow, such a mockery of man. And now I am
unworthy to be the wife of any gentleman; and you--look me in the face,
George--are you worthy to be my husband?

AUSTIN. No, Dorothy, I am not. I was a vain fool; I blundered away the
most precious opportunity; and my regret will be lifelong. Do me the
justice to accept this full confession of my fault. I am here to-day to
own and to repair it.

DOROTHY. Repair it? Sir, you condescend too far.

AUSTIN. I perceive with shame how grievously I had misjudged you. But
now, Dorothy, believe me, my eyes are opened. I plead with you, not as
my equal, but as one in all ways better than myself. I admire you, not
in that trivial sense in which we men are wont to speak of women, but as
God's work: as a wise mind, a noble soul, and a most generous heart,
from whose society I have all to gain, all to learn. Dorothy, in one
word, I love you.

DOROTHY. And what, sir, has wrought this transformation? You knew me of