How much better to ignore your enemies!
In such a position, I should carefully avoid every word that
betrayed personal feeling.'
'Well, well; you are of course right, my good girl. And I believe
I should do injustice to myself if I made you think that those
ignoble motives are the strongest in me. No; it isn't so. From my
boyhood I have had a passionate desire of literary fame, deep
down below all the surface faults of my character. The best of my
life has gone by, and it drives me to despair when I feel that I
have not gained the position due to me. There is only one way of
doing this now, and that is by becoming the editor of an
important periodical. Only in that way shall I succeed in forcing
people to pay attention to my claims. Many a man goes to his
grave unrecognised, just because he has never had a fair
judgment. Nowadays it is the unscrupulous men of business who
hold the attention of the public; they blow their trumpets so
loudly that the voices of honest men have no chance of being
heard.'
Marian was pained by the humility of his pleading with her--for
what was all this but an endeavour to move her sympathies?--and
by the necessity she was under of seeming to turn a deaf ear.
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