Or if, indeed, he loved her, how terrible it was to realize, as he thought he did but too vividly, that she was unworthy of his love! Had she not wished to save the old home at the cost of his brother's liberty?
True, Ralph was _his_ brother, not _hers_, and perhaps it was too much to expect that she should feel his present situation as deeply as he did.

Yet he had thought her a rich, large soul, as unselfish as pure.

It was terrible to feel that this had been an idle dream, a mere mockery of the poor reality, and that his had been a vain fool's paradise.
Then to think that he was forever to be haunted by this idle dream; to think that the shattered idol which he could no longer worship was to live with him to the end, to get up and lie down with him, and stand forever beside him! Perhaps, after all, he had been too hard on the girl.

Willy told himself it had been wrong to expect so much of her.

She was--he must look the stern fact in the face--she was a country girl, and no more.
Then was she not also the daughter of Simeon Stagg?
Yes, the sunshine had been over her when he looked at her before, and it had bathed her in a beauty that was not her own.