"You can talk to me in this way, urge me to be ambitious, and yet confess that you could give yourself to one of those drones of whom you speak with such scorn."
"I speak of no one with scorn; and I am not urging you; and at present am not talking of giving myself to any one. You ask as to the possibility of my ever marrying a clergyman; I say that it is very possible that I may do so some day."
"Miss Waddington," said George; and now he had turned his face absolutely from the city, and was looking upwards to the hill; upwards, full into the beauty of her countenance. "Miss Waddington!"
"Well, Mr. Bertram?"
"You speak of me as though I were a being high in the scale of humanity—"
"And so I think of you."
"Listen for a moment—and of yourself as one comparatively low."
"No, no, not low; I have too much pride for that; much lower than you, certainly, for I have given no proofs of genius."
"Well—lower than me. That is what you have said, and I do not believe that you would say so falsely. You would not descend to flatter me?"
"Certainly not; but—"