And what a chance of proving her truth would he not
deprive her of, if, as he approached her, he called on the marquis
to supplement the man!--But what then was the man, fisherman or
marquis, to dare even himself to such a glory as the Lady Clementina?
--This much of a man at least, answered his waking dignity, that
he could not condescend to be accepted as Malcolm, Marquis of
Lossie, knowing he would have been rejected as Malcolm MacPhail,
fisherman and groom.
Accepted as marquis, he would for ever be haunted with the channering
question whether she would have accepted him as groom? And if in
his pain he were one day to utter it, and she in her honesty were
to confess she would not, must she not then fall prone from her
pedestal in his imagination? Could he then, in love for the woman
herself condescend as marquis to marry one who might not have married
him as any something else he could honestly have been, under the
all enlightening sun: but again! was that fair to her yet? Might
she not see in the marquis the truth and worth which the blinding
falsehoods of society prevented her from seeing in the groom?
Might not a lady--he tried to think of a lady in the abstract--
might not a lady, in marrying a marquis, a lady to whom from her
own position a marquis was just a man on the level, marry in him
the man he was, and not the marquis he seemed? Most certainly, he
answered: he must not be unfair.
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