"I wonder if it will ever be engraved on people's tomb-stones how much they die worth?" said Agnes. "That would be all the good many people can ever get by their wealth, and what they are much more proud of, in this mercenary world, than of any personal good qualities."
"Young ladies are for ever working me purses, and I have nothing to put in them!" exclaimed Sir Patrick, throwing his own up in the air, and catching it again. "Sir Arthur and I are both fighting under the banner of poverty now; and that one word expresses in a small compass all earthly annoyance."
"Oh, no! There are many things worse!" exclaimed Agnes magnanimously. "What a vulgar, low, mercenary idea! so like you, Patrick!"
"Thank you, Agnes! If your good opinion were worth a farthing, I should grudge to have lost it!"
"But Dunbar! revenons a nos moutons," interrupted Captain De Crespigny, trying to look indifferent. "Surely there is no just cause or impediment why we may not ride down to Portobello this morning, and call on good, worthy Sir Arthur together. It is a perfect disgrace to us both that we never go near his house, much as I always have respected him, and always shall."
"This is a very sudden fit of cordiality! When did you feel the first symptoms coming on?" asked Sir Patrick drily, while Agnes began vehemently winding some skeins of silk. "Let me feel your pulse, De Crespigny. I am ready to bet your uncle against mine—and the odds are considerable—that half an hour since, you would no more have thought of paying a P.P.C. visit to old Sir Arthur, than to Lord Nelson's monument. My dear fellow, I know you—and you ought to know me better than to suppose me capable of paying a dull, penitential visit there!"
"Well, be it so! This is no time for me to recommend disinterested attentions, Dunbar, as I am on wing for Yorkshire, obliged during a whole long dreary month to play the amiable! Did you ever try that experiment, Miss Dunbar?"
"Of being amiable? no, never! I am not come to that yet! Whenever people mention a young lady as being amiable, you may depend upon it she has nothing better to recommend her. I leave mere hum-drum good qualities to such people as Clara Granville."
"Omit her in your conversation altogether, Agnes! I told you already, that she must never be named here," interrupted Sir Patrick, with angry vehemence. "Why will you continually intrude that family on our conversation?"
"I do not, Patrick. I beg leave to deny the honorable gentleman's last assertion! It is three days at least since I have so much as named Clara Gran——"