"Does it? I have no popular knack; I lack the conjurer's instincts; and I don't mean to wait for Jean Walkingshaw till I am fifty-five."
"Must it be she?" asked Hillary.
"It must!"
"Her father won't help?"
"If he wasn't so infernally respectable he'd shoot me at sight."
"Run away with her. Once you've got her, he won't be heathen enough to let her starve."
"In the first place," replied Lucas, "she wouldn't run away with me. That's the infernal, charming, irritating, splendid thing about her—she is true to us both."
"Won't chuck you and won't chuck the old boy either?"
Lucas nodded.