"Lucy, I wish we could keep that child with us."
"So do I. She has always been one of ourselves, almost ever since she came here, a little decked-out, Frenchified doll, speaking broken English. But her heart is set upon her own people."
"Yes, and she knows nothing about them, nor, for that matter, do we."
"We know that her father is a man of good family—one of the Chandos of Charne."
"And the black sheep for all you can tell," interrupted Mr. Melville.
"Come, don't make the worst of it, Joe!"
"Yes, it's bad enough as it is. This girl, brought up with a taste for everything money can buy, and left without any provision. I call it a most shameful, abominable business. Verona will never understand shifts and scraping. She will have to put up with a vile climate, and to adapt herself to a new life. Now Madge is away, and Robert is at sea, I think she might remain on as our adopted daughter. She does the flowers for you, and mends my gloves, and cuts my papers, and plays picquet, and sends back my books to the London library—we shall not be able to spare her."
"My dear Joe, I'm afraid we must, sorely as we want her, and much as I believe she loves us. Her heart, as I've already assured you, is with her own people. If we kept her with us, she would be continually pining to fly away, like a robin in a cage."
"I sincerely hope her expectations may be realised, but I think it is a risky experiment, attaching oneself to a hitherto unknown family."
"She will be an acquisition anywhere, so lively and so sweet tempered, and entirely unconscious of herself. Her great social success never made the smallest difference to us; she wrote to me as regularly as Madge. I believe she had no end of offers of marriage—including one from a prince!"