“And yet you tried to trace a likeness between us.”
“You won't say that I succeeded,” said he, with a laugh.
“It was then as I stood there gazing on her, thinking of her sad story, that I bethought me what an ignoble part it was I played to compromise the rights that she had won, and how unworthy I was to be the descendant of the beautiful Enrichetta.”
“You are about the only man I ever met who was in love with his grandmother.”
“Call it how you like, her lovely face has never left me since I saw it there.”
“And yet your regret implies that you are only sorry not to have made a better bargain.”
“No, Philip: my regret is not to have stood out for terms that must have been refused to me; I wish I had asked for the 'impossible.' I tried to make a laughing matter of it when I began, but I cannot—I cannot. I have got the feeling that I have been selling my birthright.”
“And you regret that the mess of pottage has not been bigger.”
“There's the impossibility in making a friend of an Englishman! It is the sordid side of everything he will insist on turning uppermost. Had I told a Frenchman what I have told you, he would have lent me his whole heart in sympathy.”
“To be sure he would. He would have accepted all that stupid sentimentality about your grandmother as refined feeling, and you 'd have been blubbering over each other this half-hour.”