They bored me as a child, and they bore me now." Christopher winced; the nightmare of his life had been the terror of boring Elisabeth, for he was wise enough to know that a woman may love a man with whom she is angry, but never one by whom she is bored.
"It is just like you," Elisabeth continued, tossing her head, "to be so busy saving your own soul and laying up for yourself a nice little nest-egg in heaven, that you haven't time to consider other people and their interests and feelings." "I think you do me an injustice," replied Christopher quietly.

He was puzzled to find Elisabeth so bitter against him on a mere question of money, as she was usually a most unworldly young person; again he did not understand that she was not really fighting over the matter at issue, but over the fact that he had put something before his friendship for her.

Once she had quarrelled with him because he seemed to think more of his business than of her; now she was quarrelling with him because he thought more of his duty than of her; for the truth that he could not have loved her so much had he not loved honour more, had not as yet been revealed to Elisabeth.
"I don't want to be money-grubbing," she went on, "or to cling on to things to which I have no right; though, of course, it will be rather poor fun for me to have to give up all this," and she waved her hand in a sweep, supposed to include the Willows and the Osierfield and all that appertained thereto, "and to drudge along at the rate of five hundred a year, with yesterday's dinner and last year's dress warmed up again to feed and clothe me.

But I ask you to consider whether the work-people at the Osierfield aren't happier under my _regime_, than under the rule of some good-for-nothing young man, who will probably spend all his income upon himself, and go to the dogs as his father did before him." Christopher was cut to the quick; Elisabeth had hit the nail on the head.

After all, it was not his own interests that he felt bound to sacrifice to the claims of honour, but hers; and it was this consideration that made him feel the sacrifice almost beyond his power.
He knew that it was his duty to do everything he could to fulfil the conditions of Miss Farringdon's will; he also knew that he was compelled to do this at Elisabeth's expense and not at his own; and the twofold knowledge well-nigh broke his heart.