'I am not thinking of Hew.'
'Committing myself—how?'
'By a proposal.'
'What had I to offer a girl so rich as Mary Montgomerie—an heiress, in fact?'
'All that a girl wants in a husband, I suppose—a deuced good-looking and presentable fellow of his inches.'
'I could never sink to be a dependent on my wife, Leslie. Had Mary been penniless——'
'Oh, come—we have got the length of calling her Mary, have we?'
'Had she been so, I might not have shrunk from asking her to share my poverty—for such it is; but her fortune is an impassable barrier between us—and I would to heaven that I had never set foot in Eaglescraig!'
'This is rather Quixotic,' said Fotheringhame, sipping his brandy and water, and humming—
'"'Tis madness to remember—'twere better to forget."'