“We have not fully decided; we think of doing either, and we sometimes incline to do both. At all events, we are not to have it; that's the only thing certain.”
“Have you got a cigar? No, not these things; I mean something that can be smoked.”
“Try this,” said Balfour, offering his case.
“They 're the same as those on the chimney. I must say, Balfour, the traditional hospitalities of the Castle are suffering in their present hands. When I dined here the last time I was in town, they gave me two glasses of bad sherry and one glass of a corked Gladstone; and I came to dinner that day after reading in Barrington all about the glorious festivities of the Irish Court in the olden days of Richmond and Bedford.”
“Lady Trafford insists that your names—your wife's as well as your own—are to be scratched from the dinner-list. Sir Hugh has three votes in the House, and she bullies us to some purpose, I can tell you. I can't think how you could have made this woman so much your enemy. It is not dislike,—it is hatred.”
“Bad luck, I suppose,” said Sewell, carelessly.
“She seems so inveterate too; she'll not give you up, very probably.”
“Women generally don't weary in this sort of pursuit.”
“Couldn't you come to some kind of terms? Couldn't you contrive to let her know that you have no designs on her boy? You've won money of him, have n't you?”
“I have some bills of his,—not for a very large amount, though; you shall have them a bargain.”