"Look along the avenue; who are those?"
"Mr. Hamley and—is it not Miss Gibson? I can't quite make out. Oh! if you're letting your fancy run off in that direction, I can tell you it's quite waste of time. Roger Hamley is a man who will soon have an European reputation!"
"That's very possible, and yet it doesn't make any difference in my opinion. Molly Gibson is capable of appreciating him."
"She is a very pretty, good little country-girl. I don't mean to say anything against her, but—"
"Remember the Charity Ball; you called her 'unusually intelligent' after you had danced with her there. But, after all, we are like the genie and the fairy in the Arabian Nights' Entertainment, who each cried up the merits of the Prince Caramalzaman and the Princess Badoura."
"Hamley is not a marrying man."
"How do you know?"
"I know that he has very little private fortune, and I know that science is not a remunerative profession, if profession it can be called."
"Oh, if that's all—a hundred things may happen—some one may leave him a fortune—or this tiresome little heir that nobody wanted, may die."
"Hush, Harriet, that's the worst of allowing yourself to plan far ahead for the future; you are sure to contemplate the death of some one, and to reckon upon the contingency as affecting events."