"Don't try to do harm—to make mischief," he said, in a low voice. "It's devil's work."
"O—oh! Are we there? It is a sudden attack of virtue you are laboring under, is it? My good friend, don't attempt the part. It doesn't suit you nearly as well as the one you have lately appeared in."
"And what is the part I have lately appeared in?"
"Well, something very nice and fascinating, and easy to get on with. If you are going to be all over prickles, and object to everything on high moral grounds, you will make yourself an emphatic nuisance, as Artemus Ward observed."
"Much better that I should take my departure, then. We shall never agree. But, Mrs. Orton, you have been very kind to me——"
"Oh! don't allude to your gratitude. It is so patent."
"You are bitter. I am glad, perhaps, to think that you will regret me a little bit. But won't you promise me this one thing—the only favor I ever asked you, I believe. Let Percivale's wife alone."
"Osmond, you are a poor, chicken-hearted coward. I am ashamed of you. Why your reasons for hating those two ought to be even stronger than mine. Here lies revenge ready to your hand. Yet you drop it and sneak away. You are worse than Macbeth."
"And you," he rejoined, excitedly, "are worse than Lady Macbeth—a woman who hounded a man on to crime. Thank God I am not so completely under your influence as that, Mrs. Orton."
"You are too complimentary, Mr. Allonby. One would think that I was anxious to murder the Percivales in their beds."