"You are sure?"—doubtfully.
"Utterly certain."
"And your brother?"
"Jack is only Mr. Rodney too."
"I don't mean him,"—severely: "I mean the brother you called 'Old Nick'—Old Nick indeed!" with suppressed anger.
"Oh, he is only called Sir Nicholas. Nobody thinks much of that. A baronet is really never of the slightest importance," says Geoffrey, anxiously, feeling exactly as if he were making an apology for his brother.
"That is not correct," says Mona. "We have a baronet here, Sir Owen O'Connor, and he is thought a great deal of. I know all about it. Even Lady Mary would have married him if he had asked her, though his hair is the color of an orange. Mr. Rodney,"—laying a dreadful stress upon the prefix to his name,—"go back to England and"—tragically—"forget me?"
"I shall do nothing of the kind," says Mr. Rodney, indignantly. "And if you address me in that way again I shall cut my throat."
"Much better do that"—gloomily—"than marry me Nothing comes of unequal marriages but worry, and despair, and misery, and death," says Mona, in a fearful tone, emphasizing each prophetic word with a dismal nod.
"You've been reading novels," says Rodney, contemptuously.