"I am so sure, that I look back with regret on the time when I was not."
"But you were in love with him."
"I was mistaken."
"No love?"
"I have none to give."
"Dear me!—Yes, yes, but that tone of sorrowful conviction is often a trick, it's not new: and I know that assumption of plain sense to pass off a monstrosity." Mrs. Mountstuart struck her lap. "Soh! but I've had to rack my brain for it: feminine disgust? You have been hearing imputations of his past life? moral character? No? Circumstances might make him behave unkindly, not unhandsomely: and we have no claim over a man's past, or it's too late to assert it. What is the case?"
"We are quite divided."
"Nothing in the way of . . . nothing green-eyed?"
"Far from that!"
"Then name it."