“I hope so, for their sakes at least; for it will save them a world of trouble to do so.”
“Ungrateful as well as perfidious! You were a great favorite with the Grahams. Beck told me, the night before they left the Abbey, that you were the only élégant—exquisite she called it—she ever met that was n't a fool.”
“The praise was not extravagant. I don't feel my cheek growing hot under it.”
“And Sally said that if she had not seen with her own eyes, she'd never have believed that a man with such a diamond ring, and such wonderful pendants to his watch, could hook an eight-pound salmon, and bring him to land.”
“That indeed touches me,” said he, laying his hand over his heart.
“And old Graham himself declared to my father that if one of his girls had a fancy that way, though you were n't exactly his style of man, nor precisely what he 'd choose—”
“Do spare me. I beseech you, have some pity on me.”
“That he'd not set himself against it; and that, in fact, with a good certificate as to character, and the approved guarantee of respectable people, who had known you some years—”
“I implore you to stop.”
“Of course I'll stop when you tell me the theme is one too delicate to follow up; but, like all the world, you let one run into every sort of indiscretion, and only cry Halt when it is too late to retire. The Grahams, however, are excellent people,—old G. G., as they call him, a distinguished officer. He cut out somebody or something from under the guns of a Spanish fort, and the girls have refused—let me see whom they have not refused; but I 'll make them tell you, for we 'll certainly call there on our way back.”