licated than before.
Three years ago it might have been very simply stated. Was he or was
he not going to marry his cousin Lucia? But now, while personal
inclination urged him to marry her, prudence argued that he would do
better to marry a certain cousin of Mr. Fulcher's. His own cousin had
neither money nor position. Mr. Fulcher's cousin had both. Once
married to Miss Fulcher he could buy back Court House, if the
Pallisers would give it up. The Cabinet Minister's cousin was in love
with him, whereas he was well aware that his own cousin was not.

But then he had never greatly desired her to be so.

Jewdwine had neither respect nor longing for Miss Fulcher's passionate
love. To his fragile temperament there was something infinitely more
alluring in Lucia's virginal apathy. Her indifference (which he
confused with her innocence) fascinated him; her reluctance was as a
challenge to his languid blood. He was equally fascinated by her
indifference to the income and position that were his. He admired that
immaculate purity the more because he was not himself in these ways
particularly pure. He loved money and position for their own sakes
and hated himself for loving them. He would have liked to have been
strong enough to despise these things as Lucia had always despised
them. But he did not desire that she should go on despising them, any
more than he desired that her indifference should survive the marriage
ceremony. He pictured with satisfaction her gradual yielding to the
modest luxury he had to offer her, just as he pictured the exquisite
delaying dawn of her wifely ardour.

The truth was he had lived too long with Edith. The instincts of his
nature cried out (as far as anything so well-regulated could be said
to cry out) in the most refined of accents for a wife, for children
and a home. He had his dreams of the holy faithful spouse, a spouse
with great dog-like eyes and tender breast, fit pillow for the head of
a headachy, literary man. Lucia had dog-like eyes, and of her
tenderness he had never had a doubt. He had never forgotten that hot
June day, the year before he left Oxford, when he lay in the hammock
in the green garden and Lucia ministered to him. Before that there was
a blessed Long Vacation when he had over-read himself into a nervous
breakdown, and Lucia had soothed his headaches with the touch of her
gentle hands. For the sake of that touch he would then have borne the
worst headache man ever had.

An