"I was sent to Madrid; and I heard nothing of her except that Sabaroff was shot in a duel about her with Lustoff; but that was two years afterwards."
"And when he was shot why did you not in due course go to the White Sea, or wherever she was, and offer yourself?"
"The truth is, I had become acquainted with a Spanish lady——"
"A great many Spanish ladies, no doubt! What a half-hearted Lothario!"
"Not at all. Only just at that time——"
"Manillas, mandolines, balconies, bull-fights, high mass, and moonlight had the supremacy! My dear Alan, tell your story how you will, you can't make yourself heroic."
"I have not the smallest pretension to do so," says Gervase, very much annoyed. "I have no heroism. I leave it to Lord Brandolin, who has been shipwrecked five hundred times, I believe, and ridden as many dromedaries over unknown sand-plains as Gordon——"
"As you don't care in the least for her, why should you care if his shipwrecks and his dromedaries interest her? We don't know that they do; but——"
"How little sympathy you have!"
"George says I have always a great deal too much. What do you want me to sympathize with? According to your own story, you 'loved and rode away;' at least, took a through-ticket across Europe, as Lovelace has to do in these prosaic days. If you did not go back to Russia when you might have gone back, à qui la faute? Nobody's but your own and the nameless Spanish lady or ladies'!"