"Don't make me appear silly! If Margaret were here, I should say something that you might construe into a compliment."
"You have never paid me one—"
"I never do compliment people whom I respect; that may account for it."
"But what would you have said?"
"That the men I have been in the habit of meeting since I came here have made me difficult to please, so that quite young gentlemen seldom strike me favorably."
"Oh, that is flattery—"
"It would have been to Miss Waring."
"How so?"
"A compliment to her taste in selecting you as a husband."