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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Confidence by Henry James: to arrange it with her conscience to make a mercenary marriage.
To expect me to help her is perhaps to treat me as a friend;
but she ought to remember--or at least I ought to remember--
that Gordon is an older friend than she. Inviting me to help her
as against my oldest friend--is n't there a grain of impudence in
that?"
It will be gathered that Bernard's meditations were not on the whole
favorable to this young lady, and it must be affirmed that he was
forcibly struck with an element of cynicism in her conduct.
On the evening of her so-called midnight visit to the Kursaal she had
suddenly sounded a note of sweet submissiveness which re-appeared again
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