"But I meant a different kind of love from that. Do you feel that your regard for your niece is sufficient to fill your heart?"
"It makes me very comfortable."
"Does it? Ah! me; I wish I could make myself comfortable."
"I should have thought, seeing you so much in Mrs Stumfold's house—"
"I have the greatest veneration for that woman, Miss Mackenzie! I have sometimes thought that of all the human beings I have ever met, she is the most perfect; she is human, and therefore a sinner, but her sins never meet my eyes."
Miss Mackenzie, who did not herself regard Mrs Stumfold as being so much better than her neighbours, could not receive this with much rapture.
"But," continued Mr Maguire, "she is as cold—as cold—as cold as ice."
As the lady in question was another man's wife, this did not seem to Miss Mackenzie to be of much consequence to Mr Maguire, but she allowed him to go on.
"Stumfold I don't think minds it; he is of that joyous disposition that all things work to good for him. Even when she's most obdurate in her sternness to him—"
"Law! Mr Maguire, I did not think she was ever stern to him."