"Nowhere; unless Heaven would make me such a man as my father."
"You and Mr. Vawdrey were such friends when you were girl and boy. I used sometimes to fancy that childish friendship of yours would lead to a lasting attachment."
"Did you? That was a great mistake. I am not half good enough for Mr. Vawdrey. I was well enough for a playfellow, but he wants something much nearer perfection in a wife."
"But your tastes are so similar."
"The very reason we should not care for each other."
"'In joining contrasts lieth love's delight.' That's what a poet has said, yet I can't quite believe that, Violet."
"But you see the event proves the poet's axiom true. Here is my old playfellow, who cares for nothing but horses and hounds and a country life, devotedly attached to Lady Mabel Ashbourne, who reads Greek plays with as much enjoyment as other young ladies derive from a stirring novel, and who hasn't an idea or an attitude that is not strictly aesthetic."
"Do you know, Violet, I am very much afraid that this marriage is rather the result of calculation than of genuine affection?" said Mrs. Scobel solemnly.
"Oh, no doubt it will be a grand thing to unite Ashbourne and Briarwood, but Roderick Vawdrey is too honourable to marry a girl he could not love. I would never believe him capable of such baseness," answered Violet, standing up for her old friend.
Here they turned out of the Forest and drove through a peaceful colony consisting of half-a-dozen cottages, a rustic inn where reigned a supreme silence and sleepiness, and two or three houses in old-world gardens.