“On my word, I cannot.”
“Don't you think Mr. Butler of something or other in Herefordshire is another guess man from Tony Butler of nowhere in particular?”
“Ah! I forgot my change of fortune: but if I had ever remembered it, I 'd never have thought so meanly of her.”
“That's all rot and nonsense. There's no meanness in a woman wanting to marry her daughter well, any more than in a man trying to get a colonelcy or a legation for his son. You were no match for Alice Trafford three months ago. Now both she and her mother will think differently of your pretensions.”
“Say what you like of the mother, but you shall not impute such motives to Alice.”
“Don't you get red in the face and look like a tiger, young man, or I 'll take my leave and send that old damsel here with the ice-pail to you.”
“It was the very thing I liked in you,” muttered Tony, “that you never did impute mean motives to women.”
“My poor Tony! the fellow who has seen life as I have, who knows the thing in its most minute anatomy, comes out of the investigation infernally case-hardened; he can't help it. I love Alice. Indeed, if I had not seen Bella, I think I should have married Alice. There, you are getting turkey-cock again. Let us talk of something else. What the deuce was it I wanted to ask you?—something about that great Irish monster in the next room, the fellow that sings all day: where did you pick him up?”
Tony made no reply, but lay with his hand over his eyes, while Skeff went on rambling over the odds and ends he had picked up in the course of Rory Quin's story, and the devoted love he bore to Tony himself. “By the way, they say that it was for you Garibaldi intended the promotion to the rank of officer, but that you managed to pass it to this fellow, who could n't sign his name when they asked him for it.”
“If he could n't write, he has left his mark on some of the Neapolitans!” said Tony, fiercely; “and as for the advancement, he deserved it far more than I did.”