"Don't I know that you're in earnest?"
"But perhaps you do not understand the full extent of my earnestness. If she were to refuse me ultimately I should go away."
"Go away! Go where?"
"Oh; that I have not at all thought of;—probably to India, as I might manage to get a regiment there. But in truth it would matter very little."
"You are talking like a goose."
"That is very likely, because in this matter I think and feel like a goose. It is not a great thing in a man to be turned out of his course by some undefined feeling which he has as to a young woman. But the thing has occurred before now, and will occur again, in my case, if I am thrown over."
"What on earth is there about the girl?" asked Lady Albury. "There is that precious brother-in-law of ours going to hang himself incontinently because she will not look at him. And that unfortunate friend of yours, Tom Tringle, is, if possible, worse than Ben Batsby or yourself."
"If two other gentlemen are in the same condition it only makes it the less singular that I should be the third. At any rate, I am the third."
"You do not mean to liken yourself to them?"
"Indeed I do. As to our connection with Miss Dormer, I can see no difference. We are all in love with her, and she has refused us all. It matters little whether a man's ugliness or his rings or his natural stupidity may have brought about this result."