"I am not what I was. I have heavy anxieties, and I will not fight with my child. My opinion is changed. She is a woman."
"'Little force suffices to break what's cracked already.' You mean that she has prevailed with you to forswear yourself—to turn traitor to me. You a traitor! 'Tis a thing impossible!"
"What is impossible? No depth of error is impossible to one who knows not himself. To upbraid me is vain. The solid earth has shifted under my feet, Peter Norcot. But 'traitor'—I'll not brook that. Worse than that I may be, but not that."
"Not that, indeed! If you only knew how I respect you and approve your staunch, fearless outlook upon life! But I, too, have endured not a little. Think of it—the marriage broken off at the altar rails! And then fifteen hours in the saddle. Nocturnal adventures to fill a volume. Terrific expenditure—wear and tear to body and soul and clothes.
"'And winged lovelings round my aching heart
Still flutter, flutter—never to depart.'
"You cannot go back on your oath, Malherb. If you did, you wouldn't be Malherb."
"We are fighting against nature."
"We are fighting against Cecil Stark, not nature at all.
"'Man's life is but a cheating game
At cards, and Fortune plays the same,
Packing a queen up with a knave——'
as Bancroft so appositely remarks. But the knave of hearts is hard and fast in a Prince Town cachot and like to stop there; and the knave of clubs—so to call that meddling rascal, John Lee—has stood his trial at Plymouth. They are done with; and King Peter shall come to his own queen again. I'm patient as a spider and sure as time. I'm going to marry Grace Malherb, though the heavens fall. I never change; but you? Am I more steadfast than the man who taught me steadfastness?