"You did me the great honour of expressing a wish to make my child your wife."
"I was asking for a very great favour."
"That also;—for there is no greater favour I could do to any man than to give him my daughter. Nevertheless, you were doing me a great honour,—and you did it, as you do everything, with an honest grace that went far to win my heart. I am not at all surprised, sir, that you should have won hers." The young man as he heard this could only blush and look foolish. "If I know my girl, neither your money nor your title would go for anything."
"I think much more of her love, Mr. Boncassen, than I do of anything else in the world."
"But love, my Lord, may be a great misfortune." As he said this the tone of his voice was altered, and there was a melancholy solemnity not only in his words but in his countenance. "I take it that young people when they love rarely think of more than the present moment. If they did so the bloom would be gone from their romance. But others have to do this for them. If Isabel had come to me saying that she loved a poor man, there would not have been much to disquiet me. A poor man may earn bread for himself and his wife, and if he failed I could have found them bread. Nor, had she loved somewhat below her own degree, should I have opposed her. So long as her husband had been an educated man, there might have been no future punishment to fear."
"I don't think she could have done that," said Silverbridge.
"At any rate she has not done so. But how am I to look upon this that she has done?"
"I'll do my best for her, Mr. Boncassen."
"I believe you would. But even your love can't make her an Englishwoman. You can make her a Duchess."
"Not that, sir."