"Anything--living the sort of life he does."
"Are you hinting that there's anything the matter with his health?"
"My dear girl, you've only to use your eyes to be aware that a doctor would tell him that he's the kind of man who ought to swear off everything. And does he?"
"You make me feel all shivery. You talk as if you expected him to die right off."
"We've all had sentence of capital punishment pronounced against us, and, though we don't know when it will be put into execution, in such a case as his it's possible to guess that it mayn't be very long postponed."
"Rodney! I don't like to hear you talk like that. He's fond of asking me questions about you; I hate telling lies; if we were engaged, and he were in one of his cross-examining moods, I might find myself in a fix."
He played with his knife while a waiter was bringing another course.
"Consider something else. Let me put a hypothetical case. Suppose a girl were to make a dead set at me, I might like to be able to tell her that I'm engaged already."
"Who's the girl?"
"The girl, like the case, is hypothetical; but I can conceive of circumstances in which I should like to feel that we were engaged."