"I shall accept any interpretation that is complimentary."
"Not one will satisfy me of being sufficiently so, and so I leave it to the character to fill out the epigram."
"Do. What hurry is there? And don't be misled by your objection to rogue; which would be reasonable if you had not secured her."
The door of a hollow chamber of horrible reverberation was opened within him by this remark.
He tried to say in jest, that it was not always a passionate admiration that held the rogue fast; but he muddled it in the thick of his conscious thunder, and Mrs. Mountstuart smiled to see him shot from the smooth-flowing dialogue into the cataracts by one simple reminder to the lover of his luck. Necessarily, after a fall, the pitch of their conversation relaxed.
"Miss Dale is looking well," he said.
"Fairly: she ought to marry," said Mrs. Mountstuart.
He shook his head. "Persuade her."
She nodded. "Example may have some effect."
He looked extremely abstracted. "Yes, it is time. Where is the man you could recommend for her complement? She has now what was missing before, a ripe intelligence in addition to her happy disposition—romantic, you would say. I can't think women the worse for that."