"Exceedingly charming."
"I have asked that girl to marry me three times, and I shall never ask her again. There is a point beyond which a man shouldn't go. There are many reasons why it would be a good marriage. In the first place, her money would be serviceable. Then it would heal matters in our family, for my father is as prejudiced in her favour as he is against me. And I love her dearly. I've loved her all my life,—since I used to buy cakes for her. But I shall never ask her again."
"I would if I were you," said Phineas,—hardly knowing what it might be best for him to say.
"No; I never will. But I'll tell you what. I shall get into some desperate scrape about her. Of course she'll marry, and that soon. Then I shall make a fool of myself. When I hear that she is engaged I shall go and quarrel with the man, and kick him,—or get kicked. All the world will turn against me, and I shall be called a wild beast."
"A dog in the manger is what you should be called."
"Exactly;—but how is a man to help it? If you loved a girl, could you see another man take her?" Phineas remembered of course that he had lately come through this ordeal. "It is as though he were to come and put his hand upon me, and wanted my own heart out of me. Though I have no property in her at all, no right to her,—though she never gave me a word of encouragement, it is as though she were the most private thing in the world to me. I should be half mad, and in my madness I could not master the idea that I was being robbed. I should resent it as a personal interference."
"I suppose it will come to that if you give her up yourself," said Phineas.
"It is no question of giving up. Of course I cannot make her marry me. Light another cigar, old fellow."
Phineas, as he lit the other cigar, remembered that he owed a certain duty in this matter to Lady Laura. She had commissioned him to persuade her brother that his suit with Violet Effingham would not be hopeless, if he could only restrain himself in his mode of conducting it. Phineas was disposed to do his duty, although he felt it to be very hard that he should be called upon to be eloquent against his own interest. He had been thinking for the last quarter of an hour how he must bear himself if it might turn out that he should be the man whom Lord Chiltern was resolved to kick. He looked at his friend and host, and became aware that a kicking-match with such a one would not be pleasant pastime. Nevertheless, he would be happy enough to be subject to Lord Chiltern's wrath for such a reason. He would do his duty by Lord Chiltern; and then, when that had been adequately done, he would, if occasion served, fight a battle for himself.
"You are too sudden with her, Chiltern," he said, after a pause.