"I detest him, nevertheless, for a French Mephistopheles,—and all his tribe with him."
"When I said as much, you always told me that his sayings had a great deal of truth in them."
"And have they not a great deal of truth?"
"I cannot pretend to know mankind well enough to answer; but I sincerely hope, not much. Life would be worse than a blank if men and women were what he represents them to be."
"I think not; for if one cannot learn to be enthusiastic in regard to the actualities of human nature, he can console himself by a boundless faith in its possibilities. And now and then, thank God,—Rochefoucault to the contrary notwithstanding,—one finds the possibility realized."
His companion made no reply; and Morton stood for a moment with his eyes bent upon her face, which, to his enamoured fancy, seemed to reflect the calm beauty of the landscape on which she was gazing. He thought of Fanny Euston; he recalled his last evening's conversation with her, and felt blindly impelled to give some form of expression to the feeling which began to master him.
"Miss Leslie, were you ever in a storm at sea?"
"Yes, in a slight one; but the ship was strong; there was very little danger."
"Then you were never flung about, as I have been, in an indifferent egg shell of a craft, out of sight of land, at the mercy of winds and waves."
"I did not know that you had been at sea. Ah, yes, you were at school in France, when you were a boy—were you not?"