I absolutely bought my wife by helping him, and she gave herself to me without love to save the family name from disgrace.
She is a good woman, is Agnes, and always places duty before inclination.

Marriage with her pauper cousin meant practically the social extinction of the Lambert family, and nothing would have remained but the title.

Therefore she married me, and I felt mean at the time in accepting the sacrifice.

But I was so deeply in love with her that I did so.

I love her still, and I am mean enough still to be jealous of this cousin.