As a rule he looked for it in women, and would say
that some amount of affectation was necessary to a woman's character. He
knew that his cousin Lizzie was a little liar--that she was, as Lucy had
said, a pretty animal that would turn and bite; and yet he liked his
cousin Lizzie. He did not want women to be perfect, so he would say. But
Lucy Morris, in his eyes, was perfect, and when he told her that she was
ever the queen who reigned in those castles in the air which he built, as
others build them, he told her no more than the truth.
He had fallen into these feelings, and could not now avoid them, or be
quit of them; but he could have been silent respecting them. He knew that
in former days, down at Bobsborough, he had not been altogether silent.
When he had first seen her at Fawn Court he had not been altogether
silent. But he had been warned away from Fawn Court, and in that very
warning there was conveyed, as it were, an absolution from the effect of
words hitherto spoken. Though he had called Lady Fawn an old fool, he had
known that it was so--had, after a fashion, perceived her wisdom--and had
regarded himself as a man free to decide, without disgrace, that he might
abandon ideas of ecstatic love and look out for a rich wife.
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