they are the only men, the only
men in the world, who marry--we'll not say for "love," for the phrase is
vulgar--but who marry to please themselves! This girl had not a shilling.
As to family, all is said when we say she was a Greek! Is there not
something downright chivalrous in marrying such a woman? Is it the act of a
worldly man?'

He walked the room, uttering this question to himself over and over.
Not exactly that he thought disparagingly of worldliness and material
advantages, but he had lashed himself into a false enthusiasm as to
qualities which he thought had some special worshippers of their own,
and whose good opinion might possibly be turned to profit somehow and
somewhere, if he only knew how and where. It was a monstrous fine thing he
was about to do; that he felt. Where was there another man in his position
would take a portionless girl and make her his wife? Cadets and cornets in
light-dragoon regiments did these things: they liked their 'bit of beauty';
and there was a sort of mock-poetry about these creatures that suited that
sort of thing; but for a man who wrote his letters from Brookes's, and
whose dinner invitations included all that was great in town, to stoop to
such an alliance was as bold a defiance as one could throw at a world of
self-seeking and conventionality.

'That Emperor of the French did it,' cried he. 'I cannot recall to my mind
another. He did the very same thing I am going to do. To be sure, he had
the "pull on me" in one point. As he said himself, "_I_ am a parvenu." Now,
_I_ cannot go that far! I must justify my act on other grounds, as I hope
I can do,' cried he, after a pause; while, with head erect and swelling
chest, he went on: 'I felt within me the place I yet should occupy. I
knew--ay, knew--the prize that awaited me, and I asked myself, "Do you see
in any capital of Europe one woman with whom you would like to share
this fortune? Is there one sufficiently gifted and graceful to make her
elevation seem a natural and fitting promotion, and herself appear the
appropriate occupant of the station?"

'She is wonderfully beautiful: there is no doubt of it. Such beauty as they
have never seen here in their lives! Fanciful extravagances in dress, and
atrocious hair-dressing, cannot disfigure her; and by Jove! she has tried
both. And one has only to imagine that woman dressed and "coiffeed," as she
might be, to conceive such a triumph as London has not witnessed for the
century!