"I didn't say there would be any. I don't say that there would not. It's a kind of thing that a woman doesn't think of."
"It's just the kind of thing that women do think of."
"Then they don't talk about it, Lord Brotherton. Your brother you know did want me to marry him."
"What, George? Before Houghton?"
"Certainly;—before I had thought of Mr. Houghton."
"Why the deuce did you refuse him? Why did you let him take that little——" He did not fill up the blank, but Mrs. Houghton quite understood that she was to suppose everything that was bad. "I never heard of this before."
"It wasn't for me to tell you."
"What an ass you were."
"Perhaps so. What should we have lived upon? Papa would not have given us an income."
"I could."