"I dare say;—I dare say. You may be an Admirable Crichton for what I know."
"I have not intended to make any boast, sir, but simply to vindicate those who had the care of my education. If you have no objection except that founded on my birth, which is an accident—"
"When one man is a peer and another a ploughman, that is an accident. One doesn't find fault with the ploughman, but one doesn't ask him to dinner."
"But my accident," said Lopez smiling, "is one which you would hardly discover unless you were told. Had I called myself Talbot you would not know but that I was as good an Englishman as yourself."
"A man of course may be taken in by falsehoods," said the lawyer.
"If you have no other objection than that raised, I hope you will allow me to visit in Manchester Square."
"There may be ten thousand other objections, Mr. Lopez, but I really think that the one is enough. Of course I know nothing of my daughter's feelings. I should imagine that the matter is as strange to her as it is to me. But I cannot give you anything like encouragement. If I am ever to have a son-in-law I should wish to have an English son-in-law. I do not even know what your profession is."
"I am engaged in foreign loans."
"Very precarious I should think. A sort of gambling; isn't it?"
"It is the business by which many of the greatest mercantile houses in the city have been made."