"You alarm me. Am I surrounded by enemies?"
"I think you have many round you. I have warned you often. My advice to you at this time is to pardon young Bradley."
"Why are you taking such an interest in young Bradley?"
"I have no secrets from you, he is my rival."
"Preposterous! How could he rival you in anything?"
"Yet he is my rival in the affections of Maria Semple."
"Then let him hang! He will be out of your way."
"No, he would be forever in my way. She would idolize him, make him a hero and a saint, and worship him in some secret shrine of memory as long as she lives. I am going to marry her, and I want no secret shrines. He is a very good-looking, ordinary young man; only the circumstances of the time lifted him out of the average and the commonplace. Let him go scot free that he may find his level which is far below the horizon of my peerless Maria."
"I don't think I can let him go 'scot free,' Ernest. I should offend many if I did, and it would be made a precedent; suppose I imprison him during the continuance of the war!"
"That is too romantic. Maria would haunt the prison and contrive some way of communication. He would still be her hero and her lover."